"Shashi Tharoor interacting with techies in Technopark" - How it went today!

Saw this post on TechnoparkToday; had spread the word today morning. Was not at all planning to attend this one; but then a few of our friends wanted to attend this one. Am now wondering, whether it was the letter from VK that had prompted us attend this session (the very same letter, which is the previous post; request all to spend two minutes to go through the letter and to spread the word). Let me also take this opportunity to thank Dr. Tharoor for having come up with the idea and for organizing such a discussion. Thank you Sir!

So at around 5:50 PM, we all started from our office to Al-Saj auditorium.

On reaching the venue, I was at first disappointed to see that it had the banner "Youth Congress Campaign". We had wished it to be more of a discussion forum about "youth joining politics" led by Dr. Shashi Tharoor, without much focus on any particular political party. However, a welcome note by Dr. Tharoor was of comfort to us, as he did mention that the session would be an interactive discussion. Towards the end, we were convinced that Youth Congress was serious of having the youth getting in politics to shape the future of our country!

To start with... Opposition Leader Shri. Oommen Chandy, Trivandrum MP Dr. Shashi Tharoor, AICC Secretary Jitendra Singh, MLA Wahid, DCC President V. S. Sivakumar were the prominent figures around. It started with a welcome speech by Shri Wahid; followed by Dr. Tharoor, Shri Oommen Chandy & Shri Jitendra, all speaking of youth and politics and Youth Congress. The message was clear: it is important that youth join politics to shape the future of the nation & that Youth Congress was the best option for the youth to have their say in Indian politics.

Am cutting short the introductions; moving on to discussions. You can skip the first two questions straightaway; we have interesting ones down the line...

User Development Fee at Trivandrum Internation Airport!!!

Started hearing protests, here and there, against introducing the user development fee (UDF) at Trivandrum International Airport. (#1, #2, #3, #4) Hope these protests do not die off without seeing any light... Pity the government which didnt even bother to raise any concern while the UDF was mooted about! My strong support for the protesters!

Was just wondering who all were mainly affected by this.
Party 1 >> Of course, the people...
Party 2 >> The airport which is going to see lesser traffic in the coming days, unless the issues is sorted out by reducing significantly or cancelling the UDF.

Of course, we have a lot more stake holders such as the tourism industry & those who are employed in this industry, even the airport taxi drivers and so on... It just occurred to me there is one more stake holder, whose name was not mentioned anywhere...

The IT companies in and around Trivandrum, mainly the ones in Technopark! These companies see significant number of foreign trips being made by their employees every year...

Now, dont tell me that these companies cross charge the flight expense to their customers. It might be so for most of the trips; but still, the extra money that the customer would have to incur, could have been used by the IT provider for something else! Besides, we still have lots of business trips, where the company itself has to incur the entire travel cost! So, in either case, introduction of UDF is going to hurt the business of the tech group of companies!

So, cant we gather the support of the tech group of companies for rolling back the UDF? Can we have these companies as well register their protests with the concerned authorities?