Articles by Shreya Pillai

Last year, controversy arose over the Karnataka government’s decision to create a ‘tree park’ in the 600 acre Turahalli Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Bengaluru. Protestors questioned the conversion of an existing forest into a ‘tree park’; asserting that the ‘tree park’ would resemble ‘horticulture parks’ with manicured lawns and ornamental plants and not real ‘forests’. The project was stopped temporarily. In mid-2021, walkers around the forest noticed signs of activity. Work on the ‘tree park’ had restarted without any consultations with citizen groups or locals. The forest department had built a park with statues of tigers, peacocks, bugs,…

Driving to my neighbourhood in the periphery of Bengaluru is like maneuvering a lunar module on the moonscape. Walking or biking is almost impossible. Every year, the gram panchayat ‘repairs’ the roads, thanks to years of advocacy from residents. And every monsoon, the road washes away. To my solution-oriented mind, the answer is really simple: study the problem - the history of the road and area; socio-cultural conditions of the neighbourhood, villages, and industries on the road; the number of cars/ buses/ people using the road; environment and climate-related aspects such as soil, drainage patterns, etc. Then, it is about…

I opened one of the newspapers today and saw a brief report that stated that a certain infrastructure project in Bengaluru that had been stalled for the last year, had been restarted. The narrative in the paper was that the contractor on the project had problems; the government put the project on hold and later, got the same contractor to resume work on it. In the meantime, a year and a half had passed. Pedestrians had fallen into potholes on the roads that were dug up for the project. Monsoon rains had clogged the works and traffic was getting jammed.…

With COVID, lockdowns, unemployment, heartbreaking journeys of migrant workers back to their villages, news of illness and death making headlines every morning, this year has taken its toll on all of us. Hunkered down in our houses, distanced from family, friends and colleagues, we had few reasons for cheer. But even amid this seemingly incessant gloom, we found some inspiration from the citizen engagement and impact that we saw in several spheres. Though the government failed us consistently and abysmally, warriors among us arose to take control of the situation. Men and women across the country organized toolkits, Twitter drives…

Over the last few years, the city of Bengaluru has been growing beyond its potential. As a city with educated and active citizens, civic activism has been a significant decider in how the city develops.  One of the citizen activism initiatives has been developing the existing railway network to boost the suburban rail project.  A few years ago, the Government of Karnataka (Karnataka Rail Infrastructure Company (K-RIDE)) started developing a plan for the extension of these railway networks. It recently announced that the 48-km Baiyappanahalli-Hosur railway line will be double tracked by 2022.  Public Notice issued by Department of Forest…