Will Smith comes on stage to present the award for the best action movies. The Academy awards for best action movie goes to Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Eric Barba, Steve Preeg accepted the award. This one is the third one for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. I need to watch this movie now.

The award for Sound Editing goes to The Dark Night and the award is accepted by Richard King.

The award for best Sound Mixing goes to Resul Pookutty for Slumdog Millionaire. Resul says history is being handed to him. How true. We are proud of you, Resul Pookutty. India Special salutes you!

Another one..

The award for best Film Editing goes to Dickens for Slumdog Millionaire. What a night this is turning out to be for India. This is the 6^th award for India.

Slumdog Millionaire has definitely put India on the map. I hope the Indian public wakes up and gives the crew a rousing welcome like they did for the cricketers and Olympians.

Three cheers for Slumdog….Hip Hip Hurray! (3 times)

Am I too excited…I hope there is more!

Popularity: 21%

Heard sales of Skoda in India have gone up by 32% in the last year. Also did the sales of other companies have almost doubled in the last 5-6 years. Prediction says they will triple by 2015 or 2016 with some 3 Million cars. Exciting to see the pace of growth.

Cars like Tata Nano which lower prices are definitely going to be catalysts in this growth.

The next thing that comes to mind, is the traffic problem. Road widening, flyovers etc may ease but not solve this problem. The average speed of traffic in Hyderabad is around 10-15 kmph. Imagine what would be the state of traffic, say after a 25 years and the rate of pollution would be like unmanageable.

Only solution to this problem is to strengthen the Public Transport system. Projects like Metro railway system are a big success in Kolkata and Delhi. However, railways alone cannot effectively address the problem.

The focus should be shifted to road transport. Here are a few tried and tested practices that our government should look into. If these have worked elsewhere, they can definitely work to a good extent:

• Enhancing reach of public transport to every nook and corner. More money should be pumped into them to make buses which would reach all the sections of the society maintaining the frequency and the timeliness.
• Special lanes have to be allotted on selected roads for public transport, which would help them clear the traffic and encourage public to take the bus.
• Discouraged to usage of personal transport. Some countries levy congestion charges to keep this under check.
• The prices should be increased on cars, road taxes and even the parking fee too. Rules should be passed and strictly followed so that no car older that 10 years or so wouldn’t be on road.
• Many people chose personal transport for luxury, facilities should be creating around public transport so that they can use their transport only till the public transport station and then take public transport.
• Most important of all, the mindset of people needs be changed to respect traffic discipline and not viewing use of public transport as loss of status.

If the government takes up the issue seriously in upcoming cities we can definitely see a better transport in India.

Image Credit: eirikref

Popularity: 9%