Good day to you all fellow Indians, we at Kochivibe wish you a Happy Independence Day.
Let us take this day and be grateful for what we have rather than delve upon what we can’t. Let us take this day to look back upon our freedom fighters who struggled to give us this India that we are enjoying. Let us look back at Mahatma Gandhi who united India in such a manner that the world has never seen. Let us take this day to thank all the Jawans and security forces who are laying their lives down for us so that we can enjoy a carefree India. Let us take this day and figure out how we can make India what she really is, strive for it each day. Let us take this day and be proud to be called an Indian, no matter where you are, what you are doing. If not us who will do all this?
Let us all be proud to be Indians, celebrate the freedom that our forefathers died to achieve for us, and strive to be worthy of that honor.
So on this note I end with two words “Jai Hind”.

Here is some good news for all those cricket crazed kochiites out there. International cricket is coming back to Cochin after 3 years. Again with an India vs Australia match on October 17th at Kochi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. This match is the first in the series of India-Australia ODIs.

The Jawaharlal Nehru stadium is going through a major revamp in tune with the IPL. Work will soon finish. This is the 7th international match that will be played in Kochi. The first match played in Kochi was in 1998. Here is the history of matches played in Kochi so far.

• India-Australia 1998;India won by 41 runs
• India-South Africa 2000, India won by 3 wickets,
• India-Zimbabwe 2002, Zimbabwe won by 6 wkts,
• India-Pakistan 2005, India won by 87 runs,
• India-England 2006,India won by 4 wickets
• India-Australia 2007, Aussies won by 84 runs.

We sometimes wish Symonds had used his bat to hit other things as well..

Come monsoon and the Queen of the Arabian is set to be lashed by the Monsoon rains, in due time perhaps. Considering the way the weather is going, monsoon is as much as a mystery in its coming as is the Smart City. But I would place a fair bet on the monsoon though. Leaving that aside, we look into the bigger picture. Right now our city is besieged by poor traffic planning, ever increasing car numbers (which doesn’t look dwindling anytime), rash and uncontested driving by the private buses, irritating and confusing traffic rules and those cones that just stick out of nowhere. Chaos in short.

Add rain to that equation, what do we have? Motorists and pedestrians will be having a nightmare soon, the city is yet to enforce a transparent system to overcome the possible traffic lock-downs that could be faced by us. Although with roads being fixed slowly and the gutters gutted, it is but the tip of the iceberg yet to be tackled by the city officials. Considering how well manicured Bangalore has managed to run its traffic system, we surely can take a page out of it.

The motorists aren’t the only people to be considered in the equation, pedestrians have equal share in the chaos, with their wanton crossings while a lane gets the green light. Its like one of the 80′s arcade games, you just chance to not hit the person crossing. Why all this bother when people can wait it out? Its not ignorance I would suppose as we have one of the highest literacy rates. Its just how our people have become and its high time we change our attitudes, the common folk and the city officials.

Kochi is remarkably is breaking even for the KSRTC low-floor buses and the A.C volvos, while the ones at Trivandrum are running at a loss. That proves that a lot of people prefer the KSRTC for city travel over the private buses. By increasing traffic routes and slowly curbing the private buses we can at the least hope to have a more better transitional traffic within the city. One where buses aren’t competing to reach stops as though its a scene straight out of one the popular Hollywood movies centered on street racing. And while we are it, Car Pool anyone?
According to urban dictionary

Carpool
When 2 or more individuals share an automobile during a commute to a destination or location.

Carpools are frequently used for fellow employees, students, and/or parents of school children.

By Carpooling, you can save money on gasoline, minimize your impact on the environment, and meet new people.

We have embraced the mall culture and so on of the west why not such practices too? It may be untold to do such a thing to share rides when people have so many stigmas bases on ego and social standings, but face it we have little choice, i.e if we rather slog it like always and enjoy the 1 hour ride on a 10 km stretch. And on the note of saving fuel and being ecologically responsible, how many of us has bothered to turn off our vehicles while stuck at a red light? Let it for a couple of minutes, collectively, that means a considerable amount. Quite some months ago some activists had stood around intersections with signs asking people to switch their engines off and they easily complied, but as a passing fad it was soon forgotten. Simple things like this can totally turn around things for the city in a good way.

Traffic, ecology, etiquette, its a long list. But being the foremost city in Kerala and a growing one at that, we need to restructure ourselves and our mentality. In years to come with IT businesses coming and shipping terminals and such also shaping up, investors and people from outside our state and our nation will start coming down in droves to this little city. We should certainly have something worth offering otherwise we are bound to end up as a cess-pool of mediocrity while the rest of India just goes ahead with the new decade. We have a very long way to go, infrastructural-wise, practices-wise etc, it is the hard truth we have to face, but we have to face it nonetheless.

I am not going to end this post with some corny tag-line asking everyone to join their hands and make a better Kochi. But we owe it to the city to make it a better Kochi for generations to come and ourselves.

Feel free to add your views and opinions.

Bird Travels which is a subsidiary of India’s Bird Group and Silversea Cruises have launched Silversea Cruises in India. The Government of India has been keeping tabs on how to make total use of the coastline that runs across most of India. According to reports, the Union Shipping Ministry has approved the Cruise Shipping policy to help the Cruise sector grow. In fiscal year 08-09, the Ministry of Tourism had sanctioned projects across Indian ports to develop Cruise tourism; one of the prominent being the development of the infrastructure of the Cochin Port, Kerala for Rs 1450 lakh. One of the feather in the cap of the Cochin port is that it has been a host the Volvo Ocean Race in December, 2008, being one of the stop-overs for the race. Development at key ports such as Mumbai, Goa and Kochi will boost the Indian cruise sector enormously which has a great potential seeing that the Indian economy is growing stronger.

Silversea Cruises sails across 7 continents covering 80 countries which is equivalent to having over 400 destinations to choose from throughout a year. Bird Travels will be promoting cruises across these exotic locations with a basic fare dependent on the course taken and the places that will be visited.