Sandeep K. Rathod

Chirag Paswan getting emotional and crying during Ganpati Bappa’s farewell 🥹🙏

“Mumbai is better than New York and London” said Mumbai Civic body Chief Ashwini Bhide as Mumbai’s shortage of open spaces came up during this Indian Express Idea Exchange. Watch the full Idea Exchange on YouTube.` #IdeaExchange #BMC #Maharashtra #AshwiniBhide #MumbaiCivicBody #BMCCommissioner #UrbanPlanning #IndianExpress

#SundayMusings A new way of looking opens a new world. In this case, it's 1,139 km of ring roads across Mumbai — with almost none of it requiring a brand-new highway. For decades, Mumbai has moved north–south. East–west is where the hours disappear. The usual answer is another mega-road, built from the first kilometre to the last. But there is another way: look at what already exists, what is being built, and the missing stitch — a connector, tunnel or sea link — that can turn separate projects into a network. That is how the rings appear. Not as 10 fresh highways. As 10 loops created by making infrastructure speak to itself. Take the Santacruz–Chembur Link Road. Its final 1.4 km looks small on paper. In the network, it completes about 10.3 km of signal-free east–west movement between the two express highways. The missing link is the project. The ring is what it unlocks. Ten orbits, conceived: Ring 1 · ~27 km · Coastal Road–Sewri Worli–Eastern Freeway–Orange Gate Ring 2 · ~34 km · Sea Link–WEH–SCLR–EEH–Eastern Freeway Ring 3 · ~67 km · Sea Link–WEH–JVLR–Eastern Freeway Extension Ring 4 · ~98.4 km · Versova sea link–GMLR/northern coastal–eastern spine Ring 5 · ~119.6 km · Dahisar–Bhayandar–Ghodbunder/Thane Coastal–ANS Ring 6 · ~185.6 km · Mira–Bhayandar–Alibaug–Virar–Thane–eastern spine Ring 7 · ~273.5 km · Uttan–Virar–Vadodara Mumbai Expressway–Atal Setu Ring 8 · ~197 km · Atal Setu–Eastern Freeway–ANS–VME–NH-4B Ring 9 · ~110 km · Coastal chain–Thane Borivali Tunnel–east Ring 10 · ~27 km · Pethe Marg–P D’Mello/Wadi Bunder–Eastern Freeway–Sewri Worli Together: about 1,139 km of orbit. The same road can sit in more than one ring. Ring 1 and Ring 10 are both inner loops of roughly 27 km. Same scale. Different stitch. And “conceived” is not “commissioned”. A network can fail because of one link nobody owned. That is the practical insight: one finished missing link can raise the value of several projects that came before it. There is a second opportunity here: public transport. Carving BRTS out of an already jammed road asks people to change habits before the alternative has earned their trust. These rings create new 3+3 corridors. Once a road is ready, a lane can be dedicated to buses where demand justifies it — so people shift because the bus is faster and more reliable, not because the car has simply been squeezed out. The goal is not just faster vehicles. It is more people moving more seamlessly — and time returned to families. See the system. Fund the stitch. Build the missing link. Then let the loop — and the bus — prove what it can do. A different way of looking opens a different city. #MumbaiInMinutes #RebootingMumbai #ReshapingMMR #MMRDA #UrbanMobility #SystemsThinking #PublicTransport

BREAKING: President Trump says he will issue a $5,000 "dividend" to every adult citizen in the US if the Republicans win the midterm elections. There are currently ~245 million US citizens age 18+, meaning this dividend would cost ~$1.2 trillion. This would mark the biggest economic stimulus payment since the pandemic.