Articles by Navya P K

World class cities don’t happen in one year. That’s as long as Basavaraj Bommai has been chief minister of Karnataka. Like his predecessors, Bommai too has retained the lucrative portfolio of Minister for Bengaluru Development, in which context he has spoken about making Bengaluru a world class city. Bommai and his supporters, while celebrating his first anniversary as CM on July 28th, mentioned the many promises he has made in taking Bengaluru towards that goal. None of them are very different from what his predecessors had promised. Neither is the city any better off today than it was one year,…

Krishnamurthy, an auto driver in Bengaluru for the past 22 years, finds passengers through ride-hailing apps like Ola and Uber only when heading back home at night. To find passengers going in the same direction. At other times, he is able to find customers around the malls where he usually works without using the apps. His main grouse is over the commission that the apps charge, but says customers tend to trust apps more even if their charges are high. For instance, on the app, he shows that the charge for a particular 1-km trip was Rs 90. “If a…

Bengaluru will soon have 8600 CCTV cameras monitoring activity in public spaces. While the city currently has around 1,100 such cameras, another 7,500 would be added as part of a new 'Safe City' project. One key objective of the project, financed by the Center's Nirbhaya fund, is to monitor, detect and prevent crimes against women. What would this massive surveillance project entail - who will look at the footage, how will it be used, and what are the expected outcomes? Here's what we found, based on the tender documents for the project. The Centre had approved Safe City projects for…

The Karnataka government has of late been mulling a solution to the problem of stray dog attacks. Prabhu Chauhan, Minister for Animal Husbandry, has said they are considering making Bengaluru stray-dog-free through vaccination and sheltering. The Karnataka High Court has also issued a notice to the state government on a PIL seeking effective stray dog management. In this interview with Citizen Matters, animal ecologist and conservation biologist Dr Abi Tamim Vanak weighs in on the issue. Dr Abi Vanak holds a PhD in Wildlife Science from the University of Missouri, USA. He is currently a Professor at ATREE (Asoka Trust…

May 17th was a bad day for residents of three low-lying lanes at HBR 5th Block Layout, near Manyata Tech Park. That day's heavy downpour saw all their homes being flooded, causing losses of tens of thousands of rupees. K Sai Kiran, a resident, estimates his loss at Rs 79,000 from the heavy rain that day. This includes Rs 50,000 for damaged furniture, Rs 10,000 to fix damaged electrical appliances, Rs 15,000 for car repair, and Rs 4,000 to clean up the house. Another resident Vijay estimates his loss at Rs 60,000 from similar damage. Ashwini Sreetama says her losses…

Two-and-half months since the BMTC introduced digital passes, demand for these passes remains low. According to A V Surya Sen, Director (Information Technology) at BMTC, only 17,645 digital passes were active on June 22nd. This comes to less than 1% of BMTC's average daily ridership of 25 lakh. In pre-pandemic times, use of paper passes was common among BMTC passengers. For example, a BMTC survey of 2019 had showed that 48% of those surveyed used paper passes. It seems few have converted to digital passes. Launched on April 6th, the total number of digital passes issued so far (including expired…

After a long delay, the state government notified the draft of the BBMP ward delimitation report on Thursday, June 23rd. Delimitation would change ward boundaries and increase the number of wards in the city from 198 to 243. The Ward Delimitation Committee, headed by the BBMP Chief Commissioner, submitted the draft report to the government on June 9th. This committee was to redraw ward boundaries based on population data from the 2011 Census. Read more: BBMP elections: Major parties have ready promises, new ones talk citizen empowerment The Karnataka state government's notification on 23rd June mentions it has accepted the…

Ever since BBMP closed down its RTI (Right to Information) Cell five years back, it's been tougher for citizens to get information about BBMP's decisions and actions. For 11 years (2006 to 2017), the BBMP head office had a fairly active central RTI Cell that accepted all RTI requests. The applicant only had to address the request to the 'PIO (Public Information Officer), BBMP', and the PIO in charge of the RTI Cell would forward the request to the concerned officer. Since the closure of the Cell in 2017, citizens have to identify the specific PIO in charge of the…

The contest for control of the Bengaluru municipal council promises at least some surprises. Like first-time contestants Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bengaluru Navanirmana Party (BNP) - formed in 2019 as a party exclusively for Bengaluru city - both hoping to make to make a mark, if not cause any major upsets. AAP is harbouring ambitions of a larger state presence if the BBMP election campaign proves encouraging. The three other contestants, the BJP, Congress and JD(S) are banking on the past record of work they have done for the city. The latter two have only their State leaders to…

As Bengaluru's schools reopen fully for the new academic year, students are struggling to cope. The school shutdowns over the last two years have led to learning gaps, emotional problems and dropouts. Sushma Chandrappa, a domestic worker, says her daughter attended her private pre-school for only four months in the last two years. "Her LKG classes had started four months before the 2020 lockdown, and she attended only those," adds Sushma. Further, the pandemic reduced Sushma's wages and her husband, an auto driver, lost his income completely. They were unable to pay school fees or ensure smartphone access to their…