Articles by Manasi Paresh Kumar

At Citizen Matters, our election coverage is focused almost entirely on data, long form journalism and in-depth conversations with candidates, not about party politics but their vision and policies for the constituency. Yet the challenge of getting 30 minutes with a Union Minister a few days before the campaign ended was always going to be difficult. We finally managed to get her to give us five minutes in a moving car and here is what she shared with us.  Shobha Karandlaje, the JD(S)-BJP coalition candidate from Bangalore North is one of the better known women candidates in the fray for…

An election campaign in this gruelling summer has been an exhausting exercise even for the most seasoned politicians. Rajeev Gowda, the Congress Party candidate for Bangalore North constituency, admitted as much. But he says, it also highlights the urgency for the measures to combat climate change and his plans for the constituency, should he be elected.  After more than two decades in politics, the former Rajya Sabha MP is all set to fight it out for a Lok Sabha berth for the first time.           We caught up with the former professor of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) at…

Uday Garudachar made his foray into politics in 2008 in Bihar, where he unsuccessfully contested a Rajya Sabha seat. An established name in the real estate and construction business, Garudachar then shifted his political gaze to his home state of Karnataka; in particular to Bengaluru’s Chickpet assembly constituency. As BJP candidate, he lost the 2013 election to R V Devraj. But managed to win in 2018 and now is once again the BJP candidate in Chickpet. His political career has not been without controversy. In October 2022, Garudachar was sentenced to two months imprisonment, the appeal against which is pending,…

As a career bureaucrat, Bhaskar Rao has donned many hats, including that of Commissioner of Police, Bangalore City. He started his political innings with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in 2022, but after just 11 months switched sides to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In return, he was given a ticket to contest the Assembly Elections from the Chamarajpet constituency against Zameer Ahmed, a four-time sitting MLA, who also started in Janata Dal (S) before moving to the Congress party.  The Chamarajpet Constituency with seven wards - Padarayanapura, JagajeevanramNagar, Rayapuram, Chalavadipalya, KR Market, Chamarajpet and Azadnagar - houses some of…

Language. One simple word that hosts so many worlds.  The spoken word (and its written version) form the basis of human social interaction from the start of civilization. Linguistic anthropology is a fascinating study of why we speak the way we do. Every language has a place of origin from where it travels the world, adding to the community treasury of speech wherever we choose to make our lives. So the Hindi word “loot” could make it to the English language and the Tamil word “kolaveri” was added to our national lexicon.  But while a multilingual society (like Bengaluru where…

On September 23, the Deputy Comissioner, Bengaluru Urban district, is hosting a virtual public consultation to discuss the environmental impacts of the proposed Peripheral Ring Road (PRR). The project has been in the news for a number of issues - continued public opposition over non-availability of the Detailed Project Report (DPR); the validity of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report; the number of trees which will be felled for it; the plethora of court cases brought in by a number of citizens set to lose their properties. That is quite a long list. Sure, the devil is in the details,…

A couple voting in the BBMP elections of 2015. What does it mean for Bengalureans to not have an elected Council now? File Pic: Akshatha M On September 10, the tenure of the BBMP Council ended, and the state government stepped in to appoint senior bureaucrat Gaurav Gupta as the corporation's administrator. Gaurav Gupta will remain in charge of the corporation until a new bunch of corporators are elected in the next Council election. It was a move that didn't surprise many who had been watching the space. But the Council elections aren't on the horizon anytime soon - partly…

BBMP launched BLCARES on August 14, to decentralise Bengaluru’s Covid management process. BLCARES or 'Bengaluru Local - Covid-19 Awareness Response and Emergency Sahaya' attempts to emulate the booth-level management technique during elections.  The programme includes BLCARES.in, a tech platform developed by the joint effort of civil society organisations including Janaagraha, Sensing Local and Reap Benefit. These groups along with Citizens for Bengaluru, CIVIC, Hasiru Dala, Naavu Bharateeyaru, Slum Mahila Sanghatane, Azim Premji Foundation, etc., will also help in citizen volunteer mobilisation and training. The BLCARES platform also contains resources and IEC training material for volunteers.  https://twitter.com/BBMPCOMM/status/1294217712781033472?s=20 Centralised COVID response had…

Kempegowda tower, now located in a park near Raman Research Institute. Pic courtesy: Raman Research Institute Karnataka government recently announced a Rs 111-crore project dedicated to Bengaluru's founding father Kempe Gowda. The project included Rs 70 crores for a statue of the 16th-century chieftain at the Kempegowda International Airport, and Rs 41 crores for the ‘beautification’ of his tomb that was recently discovered in Magadi.  The project understandably came under fire given that we are among the states hit worst by COVID-19.  But the argument presented by the powers-to-be in the public domain was that the project was meant to…

“Read up. You really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.” These are famous lines from Arthur Conan Doyle’s 'A Study in Scarlet'. A problem or its solution have all transpired before. But have we missed the lessons? It has been nine months since the first case of COVID-19 was reported from Wuhan, China in November 2019. The problem took a life of its own and knocked on India’s shores through Kerala in January 2020. It became Bengaluru's problem in March of 2020. While Bengaluru started out well in keeping the pandemic under…