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Resentment against hike in bus fare mounting in Bhopal

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NK SINGH Though a Govt. directive has frustrated the earlier efforts of the MPSRTC to increase the city bus fares by as much as 300 per cent, the public resent even the 25 per cent hike. It is "totally unjust, uncalled for and arbitrary", this is the consensus that has emerged from an opinion conducted by "Commoner" among a cross-section of politicians, public men, trade union leaders, and last but not least, the common bus travelling public. However, a section of the people held, that an average passenger would not grudge a slight pinche in his pocket provided the MPSRTC toned up its services. But far from being satisfactory, the MPSRTC-run city bus service in the capital is an endless tale of woe. Hours of long waiting, over-crowding people clinging to window panes frequent breakdowns, age-old fleet of buses, unimaginative routes and the attitude of passengers one can be patient only when he is sure to get into the next bus are some of the ills plaguing the city b...

Heavy Engineering Corporation in Trouble


Heavy Engineering Corporation, Ranchi. Source HEC

NK SINGH

Ever since its birth in 1958 the Rs 250 crore Heavy Engineering Corporation, Ranchi, a public sector undertaking has rmained in a state of never-ending crisis.

Heavy Machine Tools Plant workers are on strike, demanding scrapping of test for promotion. The employees do not want to appear for test.

In the past ten years HEC has seen at least three permanent chairmen and more than a dozen officiating chairmen.

According to KC Pant, Union Minister of State for Steel and Heavy Engineering, it would reach its annual rated capacity of 80,000 tonnes by 1974-75, 20 years after its inception! There are always strikes in HEC.

The most interesting part of the strike was reappearance of the famous Naxalite leader, Satya Narayan Singh, who is general secretary of Hatia Mazdoor Union. Singh was reported to have gone underground after the Naxalbari movement.

Excerpts from Frontier 24 May 1969



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