Articles by Pavan Srinath

At least a dozen ice cream parlours, car accessory shops, hardware, electrical shops, stationary and a bustling Brahmin Tiffin Bar, a Public Sector Bank, a huge shopping centre and a former chief minister's residence lie in the very busy 80 feet road in Sanjay Nagar, RMV 2nd stage, falling under Ward 18 in in Bengaluru. The 80 feet road starts from Sanjay Nagar and ends at MS Ramaiah Hospital Signal. It connects Sanjay Nagar Main Road to New BEL Road. The road is a vital link to office goers, school children, patients visiting MS Ramaiah Hospital etc. Sadly, the 1.5…

Mount Carmel College, Bangalore, in collaboration with the Takshashila Institution, is launching a Master of Arts in Public Policy course. The introductory batch of this two-year course is due to commence from June 2016. Public policy is a sunrise industry in India, with a growing demand for trained public policy professionals in the corporate and not-for-profit sectors, as well as in government and politics. This course has a specially designed curriculum suited to India's needs. The course will create talented professionals who are well-equipped to engage in the complex arena of public affairs in India. The Takshashila Institution has been…

We spend a lot of time talking about national politics in India, with the general elections in 2014 being a subject of conversations for well over a year now. Conversations on state level politics take up the remainder of our time. In contrast, many of the problems that we face in Bengaluru on a day to day basis are municipal in nature: be it the lack of good roads and public transport, unreliable power supply, unsafe drinking water or garbage that lines our streets. Who becomes your next corporator or local council member is perhaps as important as who becomes…

Ever so often, somebody makes the statement – that we need to have a right to water. You can substitute water with education, food, health or any other resource-dependent ‘right’ — the arguments are quite similar: that not enough people have sufficient access to it, that the lack of availability of the right was a fundamental human indignity, that it was likely against the fundamental right to life guaranteed by the constitution, and that it was high time the state did something about it. For better or worse, this has now resulted in Right to Education legislation, and will likely…

The south Indian state of Karnataka has over 29,000 villages spread across a 190,000 square kilometres. Anyone who travels a little in the state quickly realises that there are common village names that keep recurring. In Bangalore in particular, lakhs of people from all over India have  settled down and many travel from Bommanahali to Kodihalli or Marathhalli everyday. There is a story here.  Here’s a comprehensive look at the most common village names in Karnataka, prepared using the Census 2011 village directory for the state. Click on image to enlarge It turns out that the most common village name…

The weather in Bengaluru has become rather unusual these past few days - with dark clouds smothering the sky, accompanied by short spells of rainfall across the city. And this after a streak of particularly hot days - which went as high as a daytime maximum of 33.2°C on March 3rd, coming back down to a daytime high of 27.1°C yesterday (6th) under the influence of clouds and spells of rain.With all apparently unusual weather in the city comes the talk of climate change and how the climate of the city is becoming worse every year. While the city's climate…

Visitors to the lotus pond at Lalbagh witness a rather sorry picture, where all patches of clear water are teeming with fish close to the surface, mouths open and gulping what they can. While the reason for this is unclear, it is apparent that the pond is suffering from excessive vegetation. Lotus, hydrangea and other aquatic plants have taken over far too much of the pond, leaving precious little breathing space for the fish. This is also in stark contrast to the much healthier lake on the other side of the bridge that that separates the two, where cormorants were…