Articles by Subramaniam Vincent

Have you wondered why a BMTC bus is forced through a narrow 9-metre road in Bengaluru? Why entire layouts come up without amenities that they city later has to somehow account for? Plenty of noise is regularly made about lack of ‘proper planning' in Bengaluru city. You need planners who understand how cities work, you need planners who have backgrounds of geography, economics, architecture and urban planning, says Mohan Rao.Pic: Subramaniam Vincent However, it isn't that Bangalore itself lacks qualified planners and architects to work with the city administration. One such planner and 'urban practitioner' as he calls himself is…

On February 7th morning, Karnataka's Urban Development and Law Minister Minister Suresh Kumar was to hold meeting to discuss a long-pending bill to reform Bengaluru's administration. This is the BMRG or Bangalore Metropolitan Regional Governance Bill, drafted by chief minister B S Yeddyurappa's own ABIDe task force. Kumar had invited all 28 Bangalore MLAs, 3 MPs and officials of city agencies. What does this BILL change? * Longer-term and more powers for the mayor * Metropolitan planning committee (with elected members of BBMP council and panchayats) will run greater Bengaluru, not the state government * BDA's planning power will end.…

The January 30th print issue of Citizen Matters hit the stands and homes in south Bengaluru exactly two years after our first issue of January 30th 2009! That maiden issue we had covered the HSR Layout Agara Flyover digging work, for those of you who may recall our cover. The Citizen Matters print newsmagazine is a fortnightly that goes to the JP Nagar, BTM and Jayanagar (tiny part) areas of south Bangalore. Apart from independent homes, over 22 major apartments on Bannerghatta road and in JP Nagar get copies. Advertisers range from the smallest local business to major silk saree…

Mugging incidents along the Outer Ring Road-Sarjapur Road are back. The modus operandi is similar to earlier: Commuters driving alone in a car are stopped by con men on bikes. The men claim money on the pretext that the car has hit their bikes by showing their damages. They threaten the commuter (often these are residents of the Sarjapur Road area), damage the car and speak in loud voices in Kannada. They snatch the mobile. They persuade the victim to pay thousands of rupees for the “damages”, taking him to an ATM. These incidents happened earlier mid 2010 and the…

They persisted with what is right and have saved scores of Bengaluru's apartment associations lakhs of rupees in 2011. Arathi Manay Yajaman, 40, and O P Ramaswamy, 64, of JP Nagar challenged BESCOM's levy of penalties on their apartment complex and, despite being pushed around initially, won their case. BESCOM had penalised their apartment complex in August last year for not taking into account the building's fire safety equipment (pumps) as part of sanctioned electrical load. On January 12th, the Brigade Millennium Mayflower block residents association, represented by Arathi, received a letter from BESCOM, which in effect said BESCOM was…

He is dynamic, well-built and tall. Like many who enter public life after a successful industry career, he has many facets. He is an entrepreneur who founded BPL Mobile in the 90s, a firm that some would call a benchmark for India's telecom revolution. Since 2005, he is a venture-capitalist, and runs Jupiter Capital, with its offices behind Kids Kemp, off M G Road, Bengaluru. And he was a former president of India's largest and oldest chamber of commerce, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).  We have become a single agenda city of traffic, traffic, traffic. Pic:…

Sometime back, we noted that the government had renamed Karnataka’s Urban Development Department as The Great Bengaluru Land Scam Department. Since then, developments have spiralled further and deeper into the mysterious inner workings of our system, and behold: another name change is being announced at the fag end of the year.BBMP is being renamed U-TURN-MP on January 1st!Surprised? You should not be, actually. Here’s the evidence:After repeatedly insisting that a link road was a must through forestland in the prestigious University of Agricultural Sciences’ GKVK campus in north Bangalore and cutting over 680 trees in 2009, BBMP is now, at…

As we go into Citizen Matters’ special list of developments for the year that was for Bengaluru, how about the year that was not?But before that, some context: Bengaluru is touted as global powerhouse in the West for its IT-prowess! US President Obama often raises the spectre of Bangaloreans stealing American jobs. A top American columnist even warned US children to pay attention to their studies or else Bangalore’s students would take their jobs of the future. Such is the fear Bangalore evokes in the West.Still, look at the inside picture. Some important events never happened in 2010, that should…

Citizen Matters and Just Femme organised a panel discussion on 'Making Bengaluru women-friendly' at the pEtE Maatu film festival last weekend. At the discussion, panelists engaged the audience with passion and assertion. Cutting across view points, almost all panelists laced their words with their own experiences and that made the entire interaction real and on the ground, as opposed an academic dialogue. However one issue that did emerge and did not get enough attention was the gap between the author panelist C K Meena and fellow panelists Deepika Nagabushan and Siri Srinivas. Deepika and Siri are youngsters in their twenties.…

It's called Saaku. It has picked up quickly this week and is a mini-rage on twitter as Bengaluru hit Friday weekend night on December 10th. Bangaloreans online are now chirping away to reach asking more and more people to join the Saaku rally against corruption on Saturday morning. Swarathma, one of the city's leading rock bands, has thrown its support for the rally. Pic: Saaku.in Walkers will start from Kanteerava Stadium at 930 and converge to Shantinagar Grounds at 1030 am, next to the Hockey Stadium, for meeting and a rally.Tweeted EndhirenV2dot0, at around 11pm, when this article was getting…