Bangalore Bus Day: Fact and Fiction
By Techgirl

India’s Silicon Valley Bangalore earns tens of billions of dollars for our country every year.  As Bangalore plays host to cashed up socially aware young men and women working in the IT-ITES sectors, there is huge support for environmental causes.  The latest such initiative was the Bangalore Bus Day on Feb 4, 2010.

Even though journalism is the only career I have ever known, it did not take me long to work out that each media house has its own spin on the same facts.  While one can understand the subjectivity when writing about political, social and even moral issues, some coverage of facts does not make sense.

The latest example is the Bangalore Bus Day on Feb 4, 2010 which was described as a day long event to promote public transport in India’s most important tech hub. Many IT and BPO workers and companies actively promoted the Bus Day.  The Bus Day was specially designed for Bangalore tech hubs like Electronics City and Whitefield

So, how do two of the most powerful newspapers in South India – Mid-Day and Bangalore Mirror - report the Bus Day?  Like Chalk and Cheese.  Like Manmohan and Mayawati.  Like Satyam and Infosys.  Like Shah Rukh Khan and Shakti Kapoor.  Very different!

Bangalore Mirror ran the following report describing it as a success. According to this report there were at least 800 fewer cars in the offices of two companies alone – Infosys and Wipro.

“
Bus Day breather for IT corridors

Taking a whopping 2,000 vehicles off city roads may look like a mammoth task. BMTC MD Syed Zameer Pasha leads by example

By Suchith Kidiyoor, Bangalore Mirror
Posted On Friday, February 05, 2010 at 06:47:47 AM

Thanks to thousands of techies who decided to ditch their cars and take buses to their workplace, the traffic on routes leading to Electronics City and Whitefield was relatively smooth on Thursday. It marked a successful beginning to Bus Day, a campaign launched by the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) to promote the use of public transport and decongest the roads leading to the city’s major IT hubs.

Officials of the Corporation said out of around 7,000 techies and professionals who responded to the Bus Day survey, majority has taken the initiative to use public transport on Thursday.
“

Mid-Day ran the following report describing it as a flop.

“
Lacking techie support, Bus Day is a big flop 

By: Chetan R (Mid-Day)  
Date:  2010-02-05   Place: Bangalore

Special services to IT corridors run almost empty on maiden 'Bus Day' as most techies stick to cars, two-wheelers and traffic jams despite days of publicity

The first Bus Day yesterday turned out to be a big flop with the initiative getting a cold response from techies, vast numbers of whom the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) had hoped to attract with special buses between Majestic and the IT corridors of Electronics City and ITPL.
“

The Mid-Day article published photos (one at the top of this article) which showed empty buses,  while Bangalore Mirror had photos of half full buses with one techie even working on his laptop.

Techgoss note: Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com