Akkarai clean-up continues

 Rajeshkanna and his group - V R Volunteers ( 'V' for 'we'; 'R' for 'are') have been at it for the past six Sundays  - cleaning a patch of the Akkarai (Sholinganallur beach) of plastic bags, can, bottles and containers. Next Sunday, May 12, they have bigger plans; and to make a success of it, they invite others to join them  - company staff, school and college students, NGOs.
Programme

Sunday, May 12
4:30 PM - Volunteers meet at Akkarai Beach - Shyamala Garden Avenue Road; collect their trash bags/gloves.
4:45 PM - Split into two groups, starting the Cleanup drive from both the ends of 1 km stretch of the beach.
6:15 PM - Collection of trash bags, to be dropped at the chennai corporation garbage hold at the end of the road. 

 Social network:
https://www.facebook.com/events/516750975027928/?context=create

 Contacts: Suresh - 9843677487;  Jai Ganesh – 9791050514

OMR traffic: Sholinganallur snarl

Those of us who take OMR to work or for business commute know  how long it takes to clear Sholinganallur traffic junction. Think of residents living in and around this place. They get trapped in knots of traffic for atleast 20 mins. on the first and last laps of their daily commute, says a report in The Hindu.   
Sabari Terrace resident Harsha Koda  says traffic inflow via Medavakkam-OMR link road, from Tambaram-Velachery main road can be halved, if it is channeled through the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) which has connection to OMR at Karapakkam.
Mr Koda who is secretary of Sabari Terrace Apt. Owners Association, however pointed out that a trench dug across the SEZ road blocks traffic to OMR. Residents have reason to suspect that trench is there to block motorists from taking the SEZ road that by-passes the Medavakkam toll plaza.. The way out is for TNRDC - the road development coompany - to set up a toll booth on SEZ road, to tap Karapakkam-Madhya Kailash traffic. They could recover the cost in a year or two.

Tapping Wind/solar power on OMR

A roof-top windmill fitted on Hindustan University campus

 Those of us in Mantri Synergy, and neighbouring Ouranya Bay, Victoria Towers or Bella Tuscany and other OMR communities don't need experts to say we come under 'a wind zone'. We experience it. We also know big wind turbines over 100 metres in height wouldn't work in our place. We could try micro wind turbines, say 15-metre tall, as they plan to do, for powering street lights on ECR. Chennai Corporation is reported to have commissioned a study for tapping wind/solar energy with hybrid models.

 Residents asociations on OMR could put their heads together to explore possibilities for putting in place hybrid micro systems for tapping wind/solar power. So that we could make wind/solar powered common area a reality at Mantri Synergy in two or three years from now.

 Experts reckon that effective solution to energy problem has to be found ,not in the availability of technology, but in reducing its expense and widening it accessibility. The proposed wind/solar powered street-lighting pilot project in Sholinganallur and some parts of ECR could serve as model for us to adopt in Mantri and other communities. Bringing down the cost is a challenge. Initial capital cost is high, but subsidy is available from the central and state govts. OMR residents association (an umbrella body of neighbourhood member associations of apartment owners) could be set up to look into subsidy options and also to work on a model project report for community level renewable energy programme.

 By way of reference material I would like you to watch these video talks: 1) Bunkar Roy on his 'barefoot movement' - 19.08 mins. It is a fascinating study on how a village school in Rajasthan has trained rural women to be solar electrical engineers for electrification of villages, not only in Rajasthan, but also in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and other developing countries from where even unlettered grandmas received technician training for six months in Bunkar Roy's barefoot college.
2) MIT professor Donald Sadoway on the missing link to renewable energy - 15 mins. video talk. He is into developing battery for grid-level storage of wind/solar energy, at the lowest possible cost. The focus of Prof.Sadoway's invention is in bringing down the cost of huge storage battery.

 The photo at the top of this post signifies 'a tip of the wind turbine', to coin a phrase, (like 'tip of an iceberg'), of the work that might well be in process at the university engineering workshop. We could tap their experience/expertise in developing a wind/solar power model for Mantri Synergy.

Unmetered autowallahs

Three-wheeler drivers who offer to go by the meter are an exception. Mr K Radhakrishnan of Dignity Foundation is quoted in The Hindu as saying,"if only autorikshaw went by the fare meter, many senior citizens would find it convenient'.
Speaking of which, my wife and I who had work at ICICI Bank the other day took a bus from Mantri's to Sholinganallur, and then a three-wheeler to the bank from the bus stop, paying Rs.30 for a km ride. ICICI Bank is located midway between two bus stops at Sholinganallur.
Our AC bus driver went by the book,ignoring a request to drop us (aged 68 and 72) at the Aavin milk dairy.ICICI Bank is right across the road on OMR. On our way back home the bank manager said we could wave down an AC bus in front of Infosys. The security guard at Infosys said it was a 'request stop' for AC buses. But then our request, nay, our pleading, went unanswered by three AC buses that followed one another, all half-empty.
On another occasion we waited at the Hindustan University stop to take a bus to Kelambakkam. A couple of buses went by ignoring our request. The conductor of the third one said they usually halted in front of the university gate, instead of the designated halt some metre further down.
MTC should rename 'request stop' as 'discretion stop' (driver's).