Current Initiatives

1. Tree Plantation Initiative, a Partnership With BBMP: Free tree plantation has been arranged for the roadsides of large areas in Bangalore. This has been done with the help of BBMP. The saplings will be provided free of cost with barricade and transportation. The minimum requirement is 50 saplings per area.

2. Survey on "Best Practices at IT Companies Towards Environment Conservation" with Climate Project India: We have partnered with Climate Project that has Nobel Laureates Al Gore and IPCC Chairman, Dr. Pachauri, as their patrons. The objective of the initiative is to undertake a survey on IT companies to understand the best practices in environment conservation implementations. The key dimension of the survey would cover areas of e-waste recycling, water re-cycling, power management and transportation. Large IT houses and data center operations will be a part of this survey. The insights gathered from organizations, will be publicized to contacts in several media outlets.

3. Symposium on "Implementations & Opportunities in Large IT Organizations to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions": Project GreenCredit in collaboration with "The Climate Project, India" and a few companies will sponsor a two-day workshop that has two-pronged objectives of sharing of best practices across these companies and will help them to collaborate with internationally acclaimed subject matter experts(SMEs). These SMEs will participate as program committee and in panel discussions, and will be experts in the areas of power management, e-waste recycling, water management, and health-cum-safety management.

Friday, July 11, 2008

E-tickets: Can we stop printing?

Online air ticketing facility has made booking tickets very convenient for the passengers and helps reduce the operational costs for the airlines (IATA has quoted a paper ticket costs approximately $9 to process, while an e-ticket costs about $1). So this is definitely a win-win situations and going forward almost all travelers will leverage the e-ticketing system. Even while the e-ticket is 2-3 pages long, the only vital information is the PNR (passenger name record) number. With this every other information about the passengers, travel itenary etc. can be retrieved.

While all this is fine, the Airport Authorities of India rules require the passenger to carry hardcopy printouts of the e-tickets, along with identity proof. This e-ticket is used by two kinds of people – (a) Security of AAI, who stand at the entrance to allow entry to the airport. The fact is that other than giving a cursory look at the ticket and examining the face of the traveler, there is no means by which these security personnel can anyway validate if the ticket is genuine or not. (b) The airline check-in counters who examine the e-ticket, but in reality need nothing more PNR number and the identity proof.

A forecast by Lufthansa Consulting in 2005 had revealed that air passenger traffic in the Bangalore city is set to grow to 10.19 million by 2010 and 23.45 million by 2025 from 4.61 in 2005. (IANS). However, facts are that today itself we have logged more than 10 million passengers in the year. So, with more and more people move to e-tickets, our paper consumption will be approximately 2 crore sheets / year in Bangalore alone. Any comments on how to address this?

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Inspirational Incidents

True Story from the Bishnois

We all have heard about the sensational news coverage of the Bollywood actor Salman Khan being jailed for killing a blackbuck in some remote village of Rajasthan and Bishnois were agitated and angered with his action. I had somehow internally framed in my mind that these Bishnois must be one of those tribal communities living in remote villages of Rajasthan.

Recently I was reading a book called Forest Tales by Meena Raghunathan and Mamata Pandya published by Center of Environment Eduction(CEE). One story in the book narrates the true incidents involving the Bishnois. I understood that Bishnois meant “Twenty-Niners” and these were a group of people who followed the 29 tenets on “Protecting Nature” laid down by their founder, named Jambaji, who lived several hundred years back.

The history narrates that this region in Rajasthan faced severe drought due to complete de-forestation. A youngster named Jambaji realized that the only way to bring relief to the situation was by recreating a healthy living environment and planting trees was one main aspect of it. He started preaching 29 simple tenets to achieve this. Some of these tenets were:
Do not cut any living tree; do not kill a animal or a bird etc. This way he dedicated himself to preaching these tenets to all the nearby villages. This started a revolutionary movement and his followers started calling themselves “Bishnois” or “The 29ers”. This community has made amazing sacrifices for conservation of Environment. One of those incidents is when a King of the area wanted to build a palace and had ordered his soldiers to get timber for the palace by cutting down the thickly populated forest in the Bishnoi area. Bishnoi villagers protested this by hugging the trees as and when the soldiers came to cut them. The story reports that 363 people were axed to death by the soldiers before the King himself intervened. King was touched and inspired by the dedication that the Bishnois showed and passed an order that no tree should be ever cut or an animal be harmed in any Bishnoi village. Today there are many blackbucks that roam freely (well almost! :-)) in the tree abundant Bishnoi villages.