Articles by Subramaniam Vincent

The Lok Satta party headed by Jayaprakash Narayan is flexing its muscles in Bangalore as the state gets ready for elections in May. The party has named 15 candidates for MLA elections in the state, including a second list that was released on March 27th. Nine are contesting in Bangalore city itself, and the rest from other parts of Karnataka. Lok Satta has a reformist positioning in the Indian political sphere. It supports clean governance, setting up of a strong Lokpal, liberalising agriculture, closing of populist subsidies, FDI in retail, and so forth. Jayaprakash Narayan. Pic: Loksattaparty.org Jayaprakash Narayan, 57,…

On top of winning a nationally televised leadership initiative in 2008, this Bangalorean joined the BJP in 2009 just before the Parliamentary elections. His induction was attended by Arun Jaitley and Ananth Kumar. He is well known as a governance reforms activist and a man who has consistently called for greater engagement of educated citizens in politics. However, today, he has struck out on his own, disappointed with India's political parties. In fact, with his new initiative Nav Bharat he appears to be hitting out against the party system itself.Meet Bangalorean Rajendra Kumar Misra, 47, better known as 'RK'. Misra…

Even as the Mandur landfill region is threatening to erupt into yet another conflict zone, the AP-headquartered Lok Satta political party has organised a walk 'Dumping SAAKU' on Saturday, December 22nd. Lok Satta party cartoon released for the walk. Lok Satta party, active in Bengaluru politics since 2010, has organised the walk from Mandur village (north east of the city) to Bengaluru to raise awareness in Bangaloreans about incessant dumping of garbage at rural-area landfill sites outside the city. The party does not have an elected representative in the state yet.Mandur is located in the northeastern rural fringe of Bengaluru,…

You live in the third largest city in India by population. The city's GDP exceeds 10 billion dollars (Rs 54,000 crores). The largest chunk of Karnataka's GDP and tax collections come from Bengaluru alone. The city has the third largest number of crorepathis in India and by some accounts, the highest median income level in the country. It isn't just that. An emerging civic and green movement led by old and young alike is fighting back to take back lost public spaces - lakes and trees for instance - with a resolute willingness to checkmate corrupt administrators in the High…

"Please, please, mera change vaapas keejiye, please sir." She was in her thirties, nicely dressed in a blue churidhar with a gold-ish lining, spectacled, and worried.Furiously issuing tickets, the uniformed BMTC person she was pleading with was in the far upper corner of my favourite red monster 500 C. The bus had already stopped at  Marathahalli and departed. She panicked that she had not gotten her change back and had missed her stop.This conductor, middle-aged, spectacled, unusually chubby-cheeked, had not even heard a word of her plea. One of us fellow passengers called out to him. In the meantime he…

In two years, I have gone from experimenting with public transport in Bengaluru to becoming a full user. I use the bus system almost 4 days a week, and carry the second most expensive bus-pass BMTC has to offer.Riding Bengaluru's bus system gives you a interesting vantage point into city affairs that I thought I would write about regularly starting with this post. First off, I developed a few nicknames of my own for the types of buses in Bengaluru. Even though BMTC has several types, I've simplified this here for making my point.Tin boxes: These are the normal BMTC…

For the last few months, ever since the muck literally hit the ceiling, and yes, I am referring to Bengaluru's garbage crisis, a new English word has sunk into the city. It's 'segregation', referring to segregation of waste. 'Segregate' is all over the media now, on radio, newspapers, magazine, TV, blogs, and the social media. It is also in all of the city government's (BBMP) recent communications on getting the city out of the mess. Mind you, in a totally different social context, 'segregate' is a bad word for a progressing, modern society. And yet for waste management, it is…

BBMP Commissioner Rajneesh Goel is a smart man. To back up his ultimatum forcing apartments to do wet waste processing within, he brought up an unknown pollution control rule.Goel pointed out recently that builders of big apartments are already bound to set up waste processing facilities. Apparently the state's pollution watchdog, KSCPB, had made a rule in 2006 stating that installation of these facilities be made a condition to issuing Occupancy Certificates. This he says is reason enough for BBMP to stop collecting waste from apartments which do not have converters or compost pits! It is another matter that neither…

BBMP's recent entry into Facebook may have impressed a few, what with the Bengaluru Traffic Police holding fort well on the social media. But not Justice Santosh Hegde. "BBMP is a den of corruption", he says, in the direct and unhesitating way he is known to speak.Justice Santosh Hegde, a man who needs no introduction to Bangaloreans, recently endorsed Citizen Matters' 'Living in Bengaluru' book at an event in Whitefield. Subramaniam Vincent, Editor, talked with him over a number of recent political and graft-related developments in the city, as they drove to the venue. This interview happened in mid-September when…

Jayanagar based N Mukund, Joint Secretary of Citizens Action Forum, sent us a hard hitting letter on the city’s garbage mess. This year, BBMP has raised the garbage cess it is collecting as part of property tax. It came a day before the latest nightmare at the Mavallipura landfill, which was about to unfold. Mukund is challenging BBMP to explain what it has done with the garbage cess collected with the property tax last year and questions the body’s decision to raise the cess this year.  “As citizens, we wish to know how the steps taken by BBMP for the…