Articles by News Desk

On 11 June 2013, Suvarna News 24X7 and TV9 news had reported that the Mayor, Venkatesh Murthy, asked for the concessionaire agreement between the Maverick Holdings and the BBMP, related to Ejipura Economically Weaker Sections Quarters. However, chief engineer Rangaraju, who took over from erstwhile chief engineer B T Ramesh, said that the file was missing. Citizen Matters' effort to try to know why the Mayor wanted the files did not receive any reply, as the Mayor asked us to talk to the BBMP Commissioner. The Commissioner, Lakshminarayan, remained unavailable over phone for any clarifications. But here is the ‘missing’…

Those who care to pause and observe would have perceived many interesting political developments in Tamil Nadu in the last few years. Of these, one of the most recent has been the student protests in support of investigating war crimes in Sri Lanka. Going by the reactions that one normally sees in the mass media, different events are perceived in isolation in the Indian media, resulting in some degree of empathy, some sympathy, but mostly dismissal, if not disparaging reactions, about the position of the state and how it has forced the foreign policy initiatives and so on. However, like…

Bangalore consumes 2000 MW of power. What does this mean? We often see in the news that so much of MW of power is required for the city, and so much is the shortage. What is it all about? How is this calculated? This is a highly simplified attempt to explain it. So, please don't compare it with what you read in textbooks!  Electricity means, flow of 'current' in a metal-wire (conductor). 'Current' is flow of electrons. It's like a series of cars moving at the same speed on a highway. Does it mean that for a given size of…

A small but significant monetary gesture came from a concerned group of children from Indiranagar wanting to do something for their deprived counterparts of EWS. They approached ActionAid to doing something memorable for the deprived homeless children. Consequently, a children's summer camp 'Chinnara Loka' was planned for 28 May and 29 May, 2013.Around 35 children participated from the EWS homeless community. The two days were spent in singing, painting and games which were designed to bring out their talents. Ananth, cultural child rights activist facilitated this programme. ‹ › $(document).ready(function(){ $('.carousel .carousel-inner .item').first().attr('class', 'active item');});We, the organisers were not surprised…

Pavan, a Bangalore-based sales professional in a company working as regional manager for India, needs to travel frequently to other cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune. If he has to catch the early morning flight to Delhi, he needs to reach the airport at 5.15am, which is not easy. There are limited number of buses at that hour; waiting for them is not a wise thing. Pavan has an easy solution: Book a cab to the airport the previous day. Shekhar Mahadev, a software engineer working in Bangalore, says, “I have to keep making a lot of trips to…

For Bangalore-based ecologist Harini Nagendra, whose name has just been announced as a winner of the 2013 Elinor Ostrom award, it is a bittersweet moment. Harini Nagendra and Dr. Ostrom at Kaikondrahalli Lake. Pic: Priya Ramasubban. The award has been instituted in the name of Elinor Ostrom, the USA-based scholar who received the Nobel Prize for economics in 2009 for her long standing body of work on the governance of the commons. For Harini, Elinor was, apart from being one of the most brilliant, incisive and deeply humanistic scholars, a very dear friend, collaborator and mentor with whom she worked…

We all depend on groundwater. The single largest source of water that Bangalore has created apart from Cauvery, is actually a hole in the ground! We are pulling water that has been down there for hundreds of years, that is somebody else's right as much as it is ours. Some use Cauvery water or groundwater to flush the toilets, while some others are not getting water even to drink. Where does ground water come from? We all live above common aquifers – spaces between soil particles and cracks, fissures and faults in the rocks. The spread of aquifer is independant…

The garbage dumped in an area that falls in between S K Garden and Jayamahal has remained untouched since 15 May 2013; The Congress councillors of both wards are busy shifting the blame on one another. What do garbage contractors do when they need to dispose of the garbage lying in a border area, in between two wards? Do nothing, leave the garbage where it is. The easy excuse is, it is not in their limit. One such case was reported in Benson town, at a road that lies between S K Garden (ward 61) and Jayamahal (ward 63). The…

Two weeks ago, when there were clear indications of a Congress victory in Karnataka, senior party leaders were not sure about how the state’s chief minister was going to be chosen. Many told the media that the ‘High Command’ in New Delhi would decide. Siddaramaiah Siddarame Gowda, 65, better known only by his first name, must have been considering his chances against veteran Mallikarjun Kharge, currently a minister in the UPA government, and select others. The ‘High Command’ then sprang a surprise. Instead of ‘selection’ which everyone with an opinion was conjecturing wildly about, New Delhi surprisingly chose election. A…

After the Karnataka elections, many political analysts said that people of Karnataka are not for corruption; the BJP lost the state because of corruption. But did they? At least in Bengaluru, this argument does not seem to hold any ground. It is true that the rest of Karnataka voted out the corruption-ridden BJP. Outside Bangalore, the party got just 28 seats out of 196, and lost its deposit in 110 constituencies - a defeat unimaginable and unexpected by its leaders. But in Bangalore, BJP lost just five seats, down from 17 to 12. The Congress party suffered two upsets (Narendra…