Heart-pounding new rides coming up at Kankaria

AHMEDABAD: The Kankaria Amusement Park, work on which is close to completion, will provide Amdavadis five world class rides. The park coming up at the new Balvatika in Kankaria is scheduled to open to the public within a month.

The Boomerang Roller Coaster takes riders to a height of 55 ft. It can carry 20 people at a time and travels at a speed of 16.67 metres per second.

The Flipping Arm is another exciting ride that is being set up. It is designed like a forestry tractor with three arms that rotate clockwise and anti-clockwise at a minimum speed of 1 metre per second and a maximum speed of 15 metres per second. The most exciting part of this ride is that as the arms oscillate, the body also moves in multiple directions.

"The Flipping Arm is going to be the most unique and amusing ride here for both children and adults," said Suhas Makwana, supervisor of Kankaria Amusement Park.

The three-meter-tall, 'Torching Tower', which has 10 seats, will have the riders' hearts racing in no time. The seats will initially rise at a speed of 3 metre per second. Once they reach the top, they will come down at a speed of 10 metres per second.

Disk 'O', also known as 'the pendulum ride', can carry 15 people at a time. Its arm oscillates along a 180-degree arc at a speed that varies with the weight of the passengers. The oscillating arm's speed can go up to 10 metres per second.

A merry-go-round with a carrying capacity of 58 persons will also be part of the amusement park. The promoters are in the process of building a kids' zone where there will be many computerized games for children.

"All the rides at Kankaria are being set up by a Netherlands-based amusement rides manufacturing company. This is the first time that the company has set up such rides in South Asia," said Makwana.

-TOI

How government plans to leverage cloud computing

The Indian government is looking to leverage cloud computing in a big way, beginning with its multi-billion dollar mission-mode projects, six of which will be kick-started within a month's time, following an evaluation of what technological changes can be brought about in these to improve efficiency and provide better citizen services.

Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) secretary Ram Sewak Sharma told ET that he has identified six existing mission mode projects (MMP) which will be assessed by an internal group, based on the need for technology upgradation, scope of process simplification with emerging technologies and the possibility of leveraging newer technology platforms.

"We can redesign a lot of projects now. In a lot of these, we can provide SaaS (softwareas-a-service), deploy the software centrally, and everybody should become a client and start using it...you can converge this infrastructure so you can rewrite codes, make them more efficient, use more technologies, use more delivery mediums," said Sharma.

The government's MMPs focus on one aspect of e-governance such as pensions, banking, insurance and judiciary. These are classified as central, state or integrated projects, and each state can identify up to five MMPs for its own needs.

These projects include Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS) Scheme, e-Courts, road transport, treasuries and commercial taxes. It is also assessing the national social assistance programme and another one related to prisons.

The combined total outlay of these projects, most of which were sanctioned between 2007 and 2010, is over Rs 4,842.41 crore, according to figures obtained from a 2011 DeitY report.

The group will make recommendations on the possibility of using a common software across different MMPs, migration from legacy systems to newer ones, and implementing more such projects in different areas to enable better egovernance, Sharma added.

In tune with prime minister Narendra Modi's slogan of "minimum government, maximum governance", DeitY's roadmap seeks to leverage different media and technology including cloud, broadband and mobile.

The use of existing platforms such as Aadhaar, social media, payment gateways, and new delivery mediums such as real-time applications are just some of the ways this can be achieved, Sharma said.


-TOI