Friday, January 6, 2017

Snippet - துணுக்குகள் 02 / 17

Varavu Ettana Pathanna Selavu Pathanna Ettana 

Made a small change to Kannadasan’s song from Bhama Vijayam that perfectly fits this situation. Income is Ten whereas expense is Eight annas.

On any given day I am for Namo’s Demo. But the major flaw was in its planning and too flexible in making amendments to combat those who found avenue to sneak through.

One such flexibility made during that period was suspension of toll collection on all national highways. The exemption was made to avoid inconvenience to commuters due to inadequate smaller denominations. By this act it was evident that the vision to foresee future issues was definitely missed.

Some of the following figures will raise our eyebrows
  • Average daily toll collection is 70 to 75 crores per day on national highways
  • Roughly there are around 320 toll plazas 
For both the operators in the public & private partnership, the Estimated Revenue leakage was Rs 1212 crores for the period Nov 9th to Dec 2nd 

To boost the confidence of these private investors so that in future they stay invested it has been proposed to pay Rs 922 crores to these institutions as a relief measure and balance Rs 290 crores will be borne by NHAI and ultimately written off.

The current contract with these private players has clearly laid out such calculation in case of decisions like these by Government, but NHAI is not venturing into those since it is cumbersome process and might lead to litigation. Hence this onetime compensation.

NHAI has already requested finance ministry seeking funds for the compensation and we all know from where the money will be funded by finance ministry.
  • Indirectly net revenue from this Demo operation gets reduced by this amount or
  • Additional Tax or Cess for Income tax payers.
Unfortunately people and Government think that tolls are taxes but they are charges for those users who use the roads. Millions of people like me who have not used the exemption during that period will also contribute is the mocking truth and alas can laugh at this situation, nothing else can be done.

ReNEWable Energy

Any Innovation in the energy sector is a blessing to our natural resources and paves way for this world to be a better place to live.

In that context in 2016 a phenomenal breakthrough was made by a French Company Newwind, generating energy from wind. I could understand the perplexity about what is new in wind energy, yes this is brand new.

There is no need for monstrous and noisy turbines that require good amount of wind to generate energy. In this new one we can use a turbine at our backyard and it resembles like a tree with tiny silent blades that could produce energy from breeze, yes I meant breeze that can be as low as 7Km/h speed.

The base frame is made of steel and the turbine sheet called “Aeroleaf” is made of Plastic and 72 such turbines will be placed in a tree. The story of this invention is quiet interesting, When Jerome was relaxing in his Garden on a windless day he observed the leaves on the trees are moving in-spite of the stillness around. He exclaimed there is energy and wanted to harvest it and came this wind tree.

France has already built 2000 such farms and planning to build another 8000 since it believes this as a clean alternative to the current sources.

Initial investment will be around $20,000 and will be able to recoup in one year if the average speed of the wind is 12Kmh. More than recouping the cost it should be considered as natural resources saver.

Energy savings from one tree is equivalent to 1905 Lbs of coal or 3.2 tons of carbon di oxide for the same amount of energy output. One tree can supply power to 15 street lamps of 50W or 1000 sq ft low consumption office or 83% of one household consumption.

Message to Minister of Urban development Mr Venkaiah Naidu to spend some time on these developments that is happening in conjunction with Mr Piyush Goyal instead spending a day near a coffin.
Actually these should be made mandatory to the IT parks and to huge residential apartments to generate power for lighting the common area. Another advantage is that in case if there is no power these people will use Diesel to generate power to light the common areas which could be saved.

Mere having the target as a banner in your webpage will not help Mr Goyal, we need to keep our eyes and ears open and always explore.

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