Articles by Shree D N

April 24th was the Women's Political Empowerment Day. Is this cause limited to just a day? How do we actually make it happen? This graph shows the representation of women in municipality, assembly and parliament levels, from Bengaluru. What does it tell you? Womens' representation in Parliament, Assembly and BBMP levels in Bengaluru. Graph: Sahana Mohan Think about it - though there are no women MLAs or MPs, there are 101 women corporators in Bengaluru. The number of councillors rose to 101 because BBMP has 50% reservation for women, not because the political and electoral system believed in the cause.…

Karnataka State Urban Development Department and the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) submitted an unconditional apology and undertaking in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) hearing held on April 19, 2017, promising to withdraw the circulars and letters that termed the NGT a ‘quasi-judicial body’. This could affect the legalisation of hundreds of building plans, residential and commercial, that followed old buffer zone rules and got sanctions, some of them even before the NGT rule came into effect. The occupancy certificate and completion certificate may be hard to obtain, if the new NGT rule is applicable for all the projects that…

Listen to Budget speech live here. Tweets by arunjaitley

The no-vote collection drive secured 41848 votes against the flyover from Chalukya Circle to Hebbal. Pic: Shree D N In a first, Bengaluru saw a movement for sustainable transport, that resulted in a no-vote campaign. The no-vote collection drive conducted by the team Citizens for Bengaluru secured 41848 votes against the flyover planned on Bellary Road in Bengaluru, from Chalukya Circle to Esteem Mall. The event conducted on Sunday, October 23, 2016, also showcased how the issues related to sustainable development or the lack of it were deep-rooted in political will. Clarifying why there were no 'yes' votes in the…

Bengaluru has the most active citizenry any city can dream of. There are sustainable transport advocates, public transport activists, runners, cyclists, environmentalists, civic activists, anti-corruption activists, urban planners, architects, artists, political activists, public policy experts, resident welfare associations - you name them, you have them here. And the steel flyover coming up on Bellary Road has united them all in protest, under the banner 'Citizens Against Steel Flyover'. A human chain event has been planned this weekend on October 16th, 2016, from Chalukya Circle to Hebbal, to oppose the steel flyover. A team of citizen activists is mobilising people across…

On Monday, (September 12 2016) as I was watching the prime-time news on Kannada TV channels, my child walked in. Sitting beside me, she watched the televised show of miscreants vandalising various places. Suddenly she exclaimed: 'Ammaa!' The TV showed the vandals ransacking an Adyar Anand Bhavan outlet, probably on Mysore Road. She asked me, 'Amma, so there won't be Adyar Anand Bhavan anymore?' I reassured her, 'Yes there will be. These are all temporary problems. Malleshwaram's A2B is intact, so you don't need to worry.' A2B is her favourite hotel and has been a lifesaver for us on the…

We launched the crowdsourced Blackspot Mapping Project (garbage dump mapping project) in the last week of August, 2016. Two weeks into the project, we are already nearing 200 spots. As we reached out to people for help, we also faced many questions: Why are you doing this? What’s the intent? What will this data be used for? So many apps to map garbage and other issues - why should we contribute data to this project? In this article, we try to explain it all in detail. Why are you doing this? What’s the intent? Our cities suffer from multiple problems.…

The Venkatappa Art Gallery could well see more activity and action in the coming days, as artists in Bengaluru come together to make the Gallery a vibrant public space and regain its lost glory, and all this without private participation. The heart of Bengaluru is buzzing with public activities right now. The Rangoli Metro Art Center is a hit because it’s open for all. Vehicle-free Sundays in Cubbon Park attract enthusiastic crowds. With the Venkatappa Art Gallery and the museums being near Metro stations, there is a lot of scope for improving footfalls at the Gallery, feels Suresh Kumar G,…

A huge tree inside the Government high school compound in Malleshwaram. Pic: Shree D N Sanjeev is a musician by hobby and a researcher at Indian Institute of Science, that is full of variety of trees, but he knows the rest of Bengaluru is not a match to his campus and more trees need to be planted everywhere. Amogh Sharma is a native Bengalurean, now working in Chennai. He visits Bengaluru every weekend and feels Bengaluru needs more trees, but does not know what needs to be done for that to happen. Ajay is an engineer working in Bengaluru who…

In what could be a big blow to all developers constructing their projects around lakes, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has delivered a landmark judgment. The NGT judgment imposes a new buffer zone of 75 metres for lakes and wetlands which will be a no-construction zone, as opposed to 30 metres of buffer earlier. This will stop all new projects from getting constructed within 75 meters of lakes, and will impact many existing projects too. The NGT has also ruled that the buffer zone of the rajakaluves must be calculated from the edge of the drain, as opposed to the…