Articles by Subramaniam Vincent

Citizen Matters co-founder Meera K receiving Manthan award in News Delhi. Pic: Navya P K On the evening of December 4th, Citizen Matters won yet another award. The tally, including reporting awards won by our erstwhile reporters Navya P K, Vaishnavi Vittal and Supriya Khandekar, is now six, in six years. The last five have come in three years. It is an even split now between awards for individual storytelling and for the publication itself. What do these awards mean to me, a journalism entrepreneur and innovator? One way to answer this question is to see what our work has…

Alright — so we’re all getting ready to vote throughout the country. Some states have already completed polling. Bengaluru's turn is tomorrow. How do you decide? This election, in particular, is seeing massive interest from all around the country. However, at least some of this interest is generated because of the silly way in which the Congress and BJP are continuing to differentiate themselves from each other, when the reality is far murkier. See through the “vote for PM” distraction First of all, on the BJP’s ‘Modi for PM” campaign, this country does not have a presidential system of government,…

Hello. Effective June 2013, Citizen Matters gets a new look and also a new engine and wheels underneath the stuff you see, read, and contribute to! We’ve made a number of changes. If you are wondering about this, read further. Otherwise, just continue using the site, nothing to worry. Most important changes A more spaced-out design. You can now login to CM using you Google, Facebook or LinkedIn social media accounts. We hope this make it easier for you to share articles, pictures, comments, discussions with your fellow citizens of Bangalore. The site will load faster than before and can…

Plenty will be written, said, read, and heard over the next few days around the return of the Congress to Karnataka. Plenty will also be said about how the incoming chief minister plans to fix Bengaluru, the ailing capital city. As if this party did not have opportunities in the past. At the end of this article, I’m going to summarise what this verdict means to me. I will also add a few key areas where I would like to see real change. But before that, let’s take a deeper look at the context under which our elections are being…

On May 2nd, Thursday evening, Citizen Matters editor Subramaniam Vincent anchored a video webcast conversation at Radio Indigo's offices in Koramangala. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP was responding to questions collected over the day via his website and twitter on Bangalore, elections, and the future. Also present were Nicole Faria, the Bangalore girl who won Miss Earth 2010, and the popular and award-winning Radio Indigo RJ Michell Patrao. As part of his series Bengaluru on poll mode, Subramaniam Vincent presents a first-hand account of the discusison.With both girls in their early twenties, and Chandrasekhar being the politican, I asked them…

Dear Dr Manmohan Singh, Last evening, I read a report of your speech at Mysore Road outside Bengaluru. "Congress will give world class infrastructure to Bengaluru: PM", went the headline by the Indo Asian News Service. The report was carried by several news websites including media as far away as the New York Daily News. It went on to quote your reason for this promise: "Because Bengaluru deserves the best", you said. Dr Singh, stop. I cannot speak for all Bangaloreans, but hear me out anyway. I do not want a world class infrastructure for Bengaluru. I want a world…

He drove into Chaithanya Samarpan Layout at Kadugodi, around 5 kms north of Whitefield, in an entourage of three vehicles. All of the vehicles were the bulky SUV-types. The owners association had organised a meeting on Sunday (April 28) morning. Pic: acsrinivasa.com. A C Srinivasa is the Congress' candidate for the Mahadevpura constituency in north-eastern Bengaluru. He is the local man who rose from the grassroots to district panchayat president. His immovable properties are worth Rs.83 crores. He is clearly a rich landowner. He was Zilla panchayat president till 2011 and is currently Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee secretary. He was…

Rajeev Chandrasekhar is an independent MP representing Karnataka and Bangalore Urban in the Rajya Sabha. In April 2012, he was elected unopposed for the second term with the support of the JD(S) and BJP MLAs in the Karnataka Assembly. He is the founder of RC foundation which focuses on primary education for poor children; and has been at the forefront of raising finances and resources for supporting Tsunami-affected people, Kargil war-affected and defence personnel and rehabilitation of children impacted by the tragic burning of school in Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu. Rajeev Chandrasekhar. File pic. Chandrasekhar has been looking forward to…

In part-I, I argued that our planners, politicians and administrators put Bengaluru's development on steroids over the last 10 years, the way farmers sometimes do for agriculture, only to find that the soil dies later.I also argued that we have built a Bengaluru in the form of a giant shining saucer that is suspended at 10,000 feet above the real land of this city. There is one single pipe holding up the saucer and through this pipe, water, services, resources and low-income jobs are sucked through to the fast-paced life above. The pipe though is now bursting at the seams,…

In the run up to elections in Karnataka, a nationally telecast TV news programme last weekend focussed on the massive deterioration of civic life in Bengaluru. On display was the breakdown of garbage management, water supply, rise of the contractor and tanker mafia and the link to politicians, the state's political parties becoming personality-led factions and in all, a capital city and the silicon valley of India hopelessly caught in a disastrous spiral. Citizen Matters was interviewed for the telecast as well. It ended though with a hopeful note that when voters have a chance to reverse things. (Headlines Today,…