Articles by Navya P K

With the severe water scarcity in Bengaluru, a large number of residents have to buy water, more so during summers. And due to indiscriminate digging of borewells in the rush to find water, the city's groundwater has been overexploited. But the efforts of many Bengalureans in rainwater harvesting (RWH) already show the way ahead for the city. Currently, Bengaluru is the Indian city with the second-highest number of RWH installations (1.55 lakh), next only to Chennai. Highlighting such efforts, and discussing how to amplify these, was the focus of a webinar jointly organised by BWSSB (Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage…

Hunger has stalked Maiduna Begam and her four children for the past 16 months. Except for a brief period after the first unlock last year, Maiduna’s husband, a mason’s helper, has been jobless for most of this period and lost his mother as they could not afford proper medical treatement.  “We manage two meals a day with difficulty,” says Maiduna, who hails from Raichur. “We have not paid rent for three months, and our landlord is threatening to evict us”. Two weeks ago, she found work as helper at a tailoring shop, but the job pays only around Rs 4,000…

In Part 1 of this series, we saw that tree transplantation is an arduous process, and could fail if not done properly. Transplantation is now becoming popular in Bengaluru for Metro and road widening projects, but how cost-effective is this? How expensive is the process, and do the trees really make it? We explore this in Part 2 of the series. Cost of tree transplantation: Thousands to lakhs The cost of tree transplantation depends on several factors - the tree's trunk size and perimeter, the number of trees to be transplanted, the distance between the old and new sites, and…

With Metro rail coming up along many stretches, Bengaluru is set to lose a large number of trees. But many trees have also been marked for transplantation. BMRCL (Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd) has been giving work orders to contractors to transplant these trees. Currently, BMRCL is the only agency undertaking tree transplantation in Bengaluru, says BBMP Tree Officer H S Ranganatha Swamy. In Bengaluru, as in other Indian cities, government agencies had rejected the idea of transplantation for years, citing high costs and low survival rates. In fact, when 10 trees were transplanted from the first Metro stretch in…

The Cauvery Stage V project, once commissioned, is supposed to solve the water crisis in Bengaluru's peripheral areas. Though the project is supposed to be completed by 2023, as we saw in part 1 of this series, work on many components of the project has only just started. At the same time, many apartments in these areas have not been applying to Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) for new Cauvery water connections. In this part, we explore why. SJR Watermark apartment in Ambalipura, along Haralur main road, off Sarjapura Road, is one such apartment that hasn't applied for…

In Part I and Part II of our focus on urban jobs and livelihoods, we had examined the need for and feasibility of an Urban Work Guarantee scheme. Citizen Matters also spoke to two eminent economists on the various issues concerning creation of such a scheme. Amit Basole, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Employment at APU (Azim Premji University), has been advocating an urban employment guarantee programme since 2019, and particularly since COVID lockdowns. Dr Jos Chathukulam is lead author of an EPW paper about Kerala’s experiment with its Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme. That such a scheme is…

Bengaluru's peripheries - the 110 villages that were added to the city in 2008 - have long depended on private tankers for water supply. The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) had promised them water supply by 2023 through its Cauvery Stage V project. Cauvery Stage V project aims to bring in an additional 775 MLD (Million Litres per Day) water from river Cauvery into Bengaluru city. As per the final project report in 2017, the total demand for the 110 villages was calculated to be 350 MLD as of 2024. The report says demand is expected to go…

“There is no blanket figure given as daily COVID testing target,” says Rajendra Cholan, Special Commissioner (Health) at BBMP. “Testing numbers are decided based on a formula given by the state TAC (Technical Advisory Committee) for COVID”. Even as the second wave hit its peak during April-May, Bengaluru urban clocked only around 30,000-40,000 tests per day, (it was 20,000-30,000 before the start of the second wave), despite experts recommending an increase in test numbers which perhaps could have identified and isolated asymptomatic persons quicker and reduced the spread. Cholan added that it was not a question of randomly testing one…

Even as the entire government machinery was deployed to handle the second wave of COVID, we have seen many gaps in how it was managed. Workers have been struggling without income, and thereby, food. Oxygen shortage left several patients dead and their families helpless. The city's crematoriums, at the peak of the second wave, were unable to handle the increasing body count. In almost every aspect of COVID management in the city, voluntary initiatives played a crucial role in identifying shortcomings in the official response and bolstering it with a hands-on approach. Here are some of those initiatives. A DIY…

In Part 1 of this series, we saw how the anxiety, financial loss, lifestyle changes and death, brought on by COVID, is having an effect on the mental health of citizens. In this concluding part, we explore how to cope with what could be a mental health crisis. A 37-year-old software engineer with a major IT company says, "As a mother, I'm under a lot of stress. Everyone is under stress during the lockdown, but I can't vent out or get upset because I have to prioritise the mental health of my 7-year-old daughter who is also stressed." She is…