Articles by Navya P K

We often discuss the poor representation of women in our Legislative Assemblies and the Parliament. Currently, only 3% of members in the State Legislature are women. And while half the seats in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Council are reserved for women, in many cases these councillors’ husbands are the ones attending to ward-level issues or even ward committee meetings. What about in much smaller units of society? Say, in residential apartments in Bengaluru. Do women in these complexes have enough voice and representation in their Managing Committees (MCs)? Apparently, not. MCs have significant responsibilities - they manage common resources…

Managements and teachers of private unaided schools across the state are protesting the state government's decision to cut school fee by 30%. Parents of children studying in these schools wouldn't, however, agree to any change in the government's decision. While this deadlock continues, Citizen Matters held a online panel discussion with different stakeholders on March 5, to look at possible solutions. The panel comprised Chaitra Rudresh who represented the parents' group VOP (Voice of Parents), Sanjeev Narrain of RBANM's Educational Charities, retired Additional Chief Secretary M Madan Gopal, and Kiran Prasad, core committee member of KAMS (Associated Managements of Primary…

As this academic year is coming to a close, students in Bengaluru's private unaided schools are in a dilemma. The state government's recent decision to slash tuition fee in these schools by 30% has led to protests from school managements and a section of teachers, while many parents are demanding transparency and accountability from the managements. Hariprakash Agarwal says his daughter's school blocked her access to online classes last August. The state government had passed orders last April and May that schools should not hike fees this year on account of COVID, but the school was collecting the usual 10%…

In mid-February, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike went into a tizzy as COVID clusters were identified in different parts of the city. Emergency meetings were held, new guidelines issued, entry of travellers from two neighbouring states restricted. Does this mean the city will soon see a second wave? After a major peak in cases last year, COVID positivity rate and case fatality rate had been steadily declining in Bengaluru. While positivity rate indicates the percentage of positive cases among those tested, case fatality rate (CFR) is the percentage of deaths among those who tested positive. The following graph, from the…

Civil society in Bengaluru erupted spontaneously to protest the state government’s plan to set up a tree park in Turahalli Mini Forest, south of the city. A Jhatkaa.org campaign to save the forest garnered over 13,000 signatures. Turahalli is one of the last remaining forest patches within the city. The Forest Department began work on the project without either a public consultation or placing the project details in the public domain. The project is part of Chief Minister C M Yediyurappa’s ‘Bengaluru Mission 2022’. Following sustained protests, Forest Minister Aravind Limbavali and Minister of Co-operation and the area MLA (Yeshwantapur…

On 29 September, 2009, the Supreme Court ordered that the authorised construction of any religious structure should not be allowed in streets, parks of other public places. The order applied to every state in India. In case of structures built before the date of the court order, state governments were to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. Yet in Bengaluru, we still see religious structures popping up on public land. This was because the Karnataka government or BBMP took hardly any action to implement the SC order - structures that came up since September 2009 were not demolished, and no…

In August 2019, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike had invited citizen groups and other organisations in Bengaluru to adopt streets. Under this volunteer initiative, the adopter has to maintain streets and ensure their visual cleanliness. Nearly one-and-half years later, the project is yet to kick off. D Randeep, Special Commissioner (Solid Waste Management) at BBMP, says the delay was due to COVID and that the programme would likely be resumed in the first week of February. “During COVID, we did not want people to come out together and do community work, which would be required under AASI. Before COVID, we…

A separate law for Bengaluru’s governance, to solve the city’s countless civic problems, has been on the cards since 2008. But when the state Legislature eventually passed the BBMP Bill on December 11, it seemed that years of deliberations on the law had been futile. It was in 2008 that the Kasturirangan Committee report on ‘Governance in the Bangalore Metropolitan Region and BBMP’ suggested a separate municipal law for Bengaluru (instead of the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976, that applies to all corporations in the state). In 2010, the ABIDe task force - constituted by the BJP government under B…

Earlier this decade, ‘new political movements’ focusing on transparency and fighting corruption -- such as India Against Corruption -- were the flavour in many Indian cities. As Kerala goes into election mode with local bodies polls this week, several such movements at the local level have fielded independent candidates for city corporations and municipalities across the state. Most of these movements are new, some being formed in the last few months even, but are mostly helmed by those with some experience in social work or activism. These groups have for now avoided political affiliation, and consider themselves an alternative to…

In the concluding part of this two-part series, we look at what prevented builders and the government from rushing to the aid of construction labourers during the lockdown. In Part 1 'Why Bhuvilal Mahato stayed back in Bengaluru' we saw how migrant workers who were looked after by their employers, did not feel the need to leave the city. For migrant workers in Bengaluru, the promise of deliverance after a traumatic locked down lasted briefly. No sooner did Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa announce shramik special trains to ferry them back to their States, the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’…