City: Bengaluru

Protest against garbage dumping at Bellahalli landfill On Wednesday morning, residents around Bellahalli landfill stopped BBMP's garbage trucks from dumping waste there. Since the last three years, Bengaluru has been dumping waste here. The landfill has become a serious threat to the health and well-being of residents nearby, especially during monsoons, the protestors said. As the protest continued, BBMP used police force to resume waste dumping on Thursday afternoon. D Randeep, BBMP Special Commissioner (Solid Waste Management), said that the protestors had blocked over 300 garbage-laden trucks. Later, BBMP's entire fleet of 450 trucks was sent on a second trip to collect…

BBMP has, for the first time, drafted bye-laws on Solid Waste Management (SWM). Aiming towards complete waste segregation, the bye-laws define eight different streams of waste - wet, dry, sanitary, non-recyclable, non-biodegradable, domestic hazardous, construction and demolition waste, and slaughterhouse waste. It defines specific strategies for processing each of these. The draft bye-laws also prescribe steep penalties for offences such as burning or not segregating waste, for violating the plastic ban, and so on. D Randeep, BBMP Additional Commissioner (SWM), says the penalties have been increased by five times. The bye-laws also have new provisions such as door-to-door collection of e-waste,…

Globally, air pollution reduces life expectancy by one year and eight months, on average. This loss ranks just below smoking, but above unsafe drinking water and lung cancer (State of Global Air report, 2019). Emissions from increasing vehicular population, and residential and commercial activities, are polluting even the air far from the source, and affecting the health of millions of people. Lack of scientific methods to assess pollution, inadequate data and analysis have further hampered policy efforts to improve air quality in Indian cities. The Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP), a leading research-based Indian think tank,…

Recent incidents of chain snatching as well as petty theft in our Vasanth Nagar neighbourhood made us realise we needed to do something. There were many dark spots due to the lack of uniform streetlighting -  random gaps between adjacent streetlights, and tree branches covering the light. So, Citizens for Citizens (C4C), a self-help citizens’ forum, decided to carry out a ‘streetlight survey’ in Vasanth Nagar. How are street lights maintained? BBMP has ward-wise contractors to maintain streetlights. If the contractors come to know of a defective streetlight, they may do repairs, but this system is unreliable. BBMP can also…

This July, the BWSSB (Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board) had warned that Cauvery water supply to the city would stop by September. Rainfall was extremely low, and water levels in the Cauvery reservoirs had plummeted. But come August, the scenario turned around completely. The two-and-half months of monsoon this year has been strange. In July end, while compiling the storage levels across all four Cauvery reservoirs in Karnataka - Harangi, Kabini, Hemavathi and KRS - I found that we were staring at the lowest water levels this decade! As the KSNDMC (Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre) does not…

The residents of Adarsh Palm Retreat and surrounding areas in Bellandur are staging a peaceful protest and forming a human chain on August 20th to highlight traffic congestion and pollution in and around their community. This is not the first time that the residents are staging a protest to highlight the pressing issues that have been neglected for long. From time to time the residents have gathered to demand for a livable Bellandur.  Traffic woes have plagued the residents of Bellandur ever since office buildings have taken over and surrounded them, hindering their access to the Outer Ring Road (ORR). It…

A well-known architect and town planner recently commented on a WhatsApp group that the whole of Bengaluru had become one construction site - with Koramangala being the epicentre - resulting in the city's livability index being at its lowest ever. If you live in Koramangala, it is hard to not notice all the development projects that are going on. You have the Ejipura - Kendriya Sadan flyover, the Maharaja Bridge, BWSSB's 6ft-diameter sewage pipeline project, BBMP's flood mitigation project, white-topping of roads all over (of course, to be dug up just days later to lay utility lines). [flexiblemap src="http://data.opencity.in/Data/Bengaluru-Koramangala-Development-projects-2019.kml" width="100%"…

563 new dengue cases in four days The number of dengue cases in the city shot up by 12 percent over just four days, this week. From the start of 2019, till Sunday, 4443 cases had been recorded in the city. But by Wednesday, the number rose to 5006, said officials. That is, 563 new cases were registered in just four days. BBMP East zone is worst affected, with 1937 cases since January. Bengaluru South zone comes next with 786 cases, followed by Mahadevapura with 760 cases. Dasarahalli Zone has recorded the lowest number, with 116 cases. Among wards, Hoysalanagar…

In Part 1 of this series, I wrote about how we, at Sobha Quartz apartment in Bellandur, have been composting garden waste. Our compost pits are not just an ideal way to dispose of garden waste, they also yield high-quality manure for the entire garden. Our apartment association also saves around Rs 25,000 annually with this process, as we don't have to ship out the waste or buy chemical fertilisers for the garden anymore. But how exactly does composting happen? And how can you ensure good-quality compost? This part of the series deals with these questions. What exactly is ‘composting’?…

Melissa Arulappan recently counted 13 bikers driving on the wrong side on a one-way street, all within two seconds. This is not a one-off incident. Citizens across Bengaluru have been noticing an increasing number of such violations in the recent past. What’s going on? In 2019, just till July, the Bengaluru Traffic Police booked over 1.3 lakh cases for not following lane discipline, 2.4 lakh cases for violating 'no entry', and 36,579 for reckless driving. In the same period, there were 2713 road accidents in the city that killed 445 people in all. Given over 13,600 kilometres of main roads…