Articles by Juhi Jotwani

Bengaluru’s water woes are not a secret to anyone, all thanks to the city’s water activists and environmentalists who have fought tooth and nail to promote Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) and sustainable water management in the city. Two well known names campaigning for water sustainable are Vishwanath Srikantaiah and Shubha Ramachandran, both from the Biome Environmental Trust. Vishwanath is a water activist and an urban planner. He has worked in collaboration with the local communities to revive 10,000 wells with the support of the well-diggers, and helped in the development of 100,000 recharge wells. Shubha is a water sustainability expert. She…

In Part 1, we saw how those who cannot negotiate the digital world are severely handicapped in accessing COVID care. In this concluding part, we examine how the digital divide is impacting the immunisation drive, and explore how it can be bridged. Experts are equating digital handicap with vaccine hesitancy. They believe the digital divide is mystifying and complicating the vaccination process. Social technologist Kiran Jonnalagadda observes, “You can combine misinformation and unavailability and create hesitancy out of it. Imagine if you are told that there is no chance getting the vaccination, that slots are full and so on; then…

Never has a vaccination drive in India been conducted with a mobile application that requires online registration. As the second wave takes its toll -- with rising infections and reducing tests -- access to the country's limited health infrastructure is becoming all that more difficult, thanks to the digital divide. Whether it is looking for slots on CoWIN or raising an SOS alert for oxygen, medical relief for COVID has to be accessed and circulated through the digital medium. When SOS alerts on Twitter reduced in the last few days, there was a false illusion that the COVID situation was…

As another lockdown began in Bengaluru, the entire day’s hustle and bustle found itself compressed into the four-hour window from 6 am to 10 am. That's when even the most paranoid of folks leave their homes to buy everything from chicken to cigarettes to chat masala. Some are taken aback when asked to pay Rs. 100 for 5-odd cigarettes while others sigh as they queue up to buy beer at 7:30 in the morning.  Read More: Will your neighbourhood grocery store recover from COVID lockdown? My daily morning ritual was a walk to the main road, to buy newspaper and…

The city that was once declared “Pensioners’ Paradise” has seen its elderly population treading the murky grounds of COVID since the past year. Data from the Health and Family Welfare Department of Karnataka tells us that while around 19,000 people were infected in the age group of 15-29 years from March 5 to April 5 as opposed to around 10,000 in the bracket of above 60 years, only 4 people died in the former age group against 214 senior citizens who succumbed to COVID. This means that the younger folks are getting infected more but they are recovering unlike senior…

On 27th April 2021, the COVID figures released by Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (commonly referred to as MCGM or BMC) showed the count of positive patients in the city at 66,045.  The positivity rate in Mumbai stands at over 13% which means that approximately 1 out every 8 people getting tested is infected with the virus. Though numbers have been falling over the past week, Mumbai continues to be the worst-affected in Maharashtra. Newer hotspots in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region such as Kalyan-Dombivli, Thane, and Navi Mumbai, are mushrooming. The government is struggling to ramp up health infrastructure even…

BBMP, Bengaluru's city government has never met its property tax targets in all these years. It wants to change that in 2021 - by revising the calculation, increasing the tax net, and verifying property data. In its yearly budget, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) fixed 2,800 crores as its property tax target for 2021-2022. This is lesser than the target of 3,500 cr. of last year, perhaps because BBMP was only able to meet 57% of that target (around 2000 cr.). The budget also proposed changing the tax calculation basis from the Unit Area Value System to Capital Value System.…

In March 2020, Lakshmi's employer asked her to take a week's leave. After the week, Lakshmi, a domestic worker, was asked to not come to work for another month. After that, her employer stopped picking her calls and that is how she realised that she had been let go. Lakshmi's story is not unusual. This one narrative from a Bengalurean woman finds itself reflected in large-scale numbers seen in published reports. The Global Gender Gap Report 2021 saw India slipping down 28 places and being ranked at 140th position among 156 countries. One of the parameters this report looks at…

We wrap up our coverage for this month with two stories on International Women's Day, observed on March 8 every year. The first of the two stories finds out how labouring women workers commemorated it this March. Among the savarna middle classes in Bengaluru, International Women’s Day on March 8 is celebrated with marathons and rallies, discounts in supermarkets, and ladies’ nights at pubs.  What is often swept under the label of ‘women empowerment’ is the history of Women’s Day as that of workers and their unionisation. It was first proposed and celebrated in 1910 during the second International Conference…

This summary of a research project -- carried out by a group of students at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements -- brings out how the rich and powerful residents of an exclusive and quiet locality in the city influence the use of their public spaces by street vendors. While street vendors are a common sight in any urban neighbourhood, Sadashivanagar is not just any other neighbourhood. The daunting presence of government officials and politicians -- its chief residents -- fills the silence and emptiness of the inner streets of this locality. Sadashivanagar, cocooned in between Sankey Tank, Palace Grounds…