Articles by Akshatha M

Karnataka Legislative Assembly elections are just a year away, and it’s time for residents in Bengaluru to register themselves in the electoral rolls. In Mahadevapura Legislative Assembly Constituency that is home to a large number of migrant population in the Information Technology and other sectors, it’s a huge challenge to get people registered in electoral rolls and make them vote in elections. Citizens in Whitefield and surrounding areas in Mahadevapura have come up with an initiative to fix this problem. Million Voter Rising, a campaign by Whitefield Rising, aims at enrolling at least one lakh voters to the electoral rolls…

Every Saturday morning Srinivasan, a retired revenue officer, and Ganesh, also a retired government employee, sit in a tiny room in one of the old buildings in a narrow lane of Bazaar Road in Saidapet. For the entire day, they sit there, receiving grievances and applications from the citizens who throng to the office from Chennai and surrounding areas. This is the office space of Satta Panchayat Iyakkam (SPI), where the SPI has been conducting their Saturday grievance redressal sessions over the last five years. These grievance meetings primarily focus on assisting people in availing government services and to help…

It has been a year since Dr D Karthikeyan took charge as the Commissioner of Greater Chennai Corporation. Within a few months of him taking charge as the commissioner, he was accorded the additional responsibility of holding the Special Officer’s post in the absence of a council which ended its term last October. GCC is not new to Karthikeyan. It is for the third time that he is serving as the Commissioner of the Greater Chennai Corporation. In a quick chat with Citizen Matters, the Corporation Commissioner speaks about some of the significant issues bothering the city. Excerpts from the…

Even as legal proceedings continue over the issue, in June the Housing and Urban Development Department of Tamil Nadu notified rules and guidelines for the regularisation of unauthorised structures under all urban local bodies in the state. The rule allows the regularisation of unauthorised buildings built before July 1 2007, upon payment of a penalty amount to the municipal authorities. While the Greater Chennai Corporation is yet to open the online application process for house owners who have violated the building byelaws, there seems to be growing dissent against the government decision. And this dissent among citizens may, in all…

In an earlier article, we had written about how residents of the IT corridor on the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) continue to incur huge expenses in procuring water and ensuring proper sewage disposal in the face of the state’s failure to provide adequate infrastructure for the same. Yet one question that gnaws at them all the time is this: When will the OMR stretch get its water and sewer lines? This is now the proverbial million dollar question to which nobody has a precise answer. A visit to the Chennai Metro Water website indicates a vibrant water and sewage network…

Towards the end of the first decade of the 2000s, the Rajiv Gandhi Salai Information Technology (IT) corridor (formerly known as Old Mahabalipuram Road or OMR), became Chennai’s new face. The 45-km long IT corridor stretch that was launched with much fanfare to attract IT industries and thus bring in profit to the government exchequer is even today one of the fastest growing residential localities in the city. But take a guess at how much OMR residents spend on water and sewage every year? Approximately Rs 700 crore or more! For the residents, mostly IT employees living on the 20-km…

Are you unhappy or upset about several things happening in society around you? Do you feel that a lack of, or misguided, government policies and decisions are hampering the greater common good and creating unacceptable situations related to abuse and violation of basic human rights, social injustice, corruption etc.? Most importantly, are you waiting for someone else to come along and put things right? The good news is that you needn’t, in many such cases. For socially conscious citizens who would like to fix the system through a court of law, the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) is a powerful tool.…

The way life throws surprises at you! It was on July 29th evening I was standing all alone in some corner of Auroville, located at a distance of around 12 kilometres from the main town of Pondicherry. I had arrived at this experimental township on the same noon, curious to know and understand how this township is experimenting in human unity. I had done my prior booking with a vehicle rental service agent belonging to Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry who was suppose to drop me off at Auroville along with a bunch of other travellers and bring me back to…

At the age of 57, when a majority of them get ready to settle comfortably into retired lives, Chennai-based businessman VBR Menon graduated from a law school in Bengaluru. The seasoned businessman became a full time law practitioner in 2014, when he was 62. Over the last two years he has been filing only Public Interest Litigations (PILs) on several significant issues bothering Chennai, including land and water. His cases have been seriously pursued by the Madras High Court and have led to the judiciary issuing several directions to the authorities. In an interview with Citizen Matters, VBR Menon talks…

The last four stories in the series explained all that has happened and is happening with the Ejipura EWS quarters project. This story, the last in the series, will narrate how uncertain the life has been for a family that is living on pavements following the eviction. Among the two dozen tiny tents pitched on the pavement of Srinivagilu Main Road just next to National Games Village in Ejipura area, is the “home” of Deepa (name changed). Her tent made of bamboos and tarpaulin, though appears vulnerable, has withstood storm and rain in last four and a half years. “My…