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Dying transport corporation
The Hindu
The public transporter’s fleet has contracted to its lowest in over a decade with financial losses mounting each year. The new privately owned cluster buses, being engaged by the government, are gradually edging out thousands of ailing buses on Delhi’s streets
The pulse of the Capital’s proverbial ‘lifeline’, the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), is growing fainter by the day. Not just its survival, but even the legacy of the DTC seems to be at stake. The public transporter’s fleet has contracted to its lowest in over a decade with financial losses mounting each year as new privately owned cluster buses, being engaged by the government, gradually edge out thousands of its ailing buses on Delhi’s streets. Last week, visuals of low-floor DTC buses being inundated while wading through waterlogged city streets and commuters being forced to rely on umbrellas to avoid leaking roofs exemplify the state of its existing fleet.![](/newspic/picid-1269750-20250217064624.jpg)
When fed into Latin, pusilla comes out denoting “very small”. The Baillon’s crake can be missed in the field, when it is at a distance, as the magnification of the human eye is woefully short of what it takes to pick up this tiny creature. The other factor is the Baillon’s crake’s predisposition to present less of itself: it moves about furtively and slides into the reeds at the slightest suspicion of being noticed. But if you are keen on observing the Baillon’s crake or the ruddy breasted crake in the field, in Chennai, this would be the best time to put in efforts towards that end. These birds live amidst reeds, the bulrushes, which are likely to lose their density now as they would shrivel and go brown, leaving wide gaps, thereby reducing the cover for these tiddly birds to stay inscrutable.