City: Bengaluru

We the residents of Shamanna Gowda Layout, in Bengaluru, are living under constant fear of a health hazard and the concerned authorities are hardly doing anything despite constant follow ups from our end! Retaining wall built near a storm water drain was demolished by BBMP in March 2017 supposedly for renovation. It has been raining everyday from mid-August and residents of our layout are forced to bear the brunt, as the entire area is covered with silt and filth that comes gushing out of the storm water drain and the unbearable stench that comes with it. It has been several…

BMTC is the lifeline of Bengaluru. Its buses deliver 5 million (50 lakh) passenger trips everyday. This figure of passengers carried is close to half the population of the city. Without BMTC, we would all be dead, in a manner of speaking, as the city's already beyond-clogged roads would need to carry this huge number of people in vastly more motor vehicles. In comparison Namma Metro does not yet carry even one-tenth that number of people a day along its currently functional 2 lines. And reports are that their service is already 'at capacity' until much-needed coaches are added and…

Why do sharp, witty lines from Dale Carnegie’s books cut the misty, morning breezes in Mitra Jyothi, a school for the visually challenged in Bengaluru? How did the author become a dramatis personae here, you wonder. Ratna, a volunteer, walks out from one of the audio rooms. She proudly says that textbooks, magazines, competitive exams, novels, fiction and biographies in Kannada, Hindi and English are converted into CDs, so that they can be documented and made accessible to visually challenged students. The technological details are rather complex but interesting. “With Daisy Resources, we are transcribing a number of books into…

It is not possible to make the city pothole-free in 10 days. So it is unclear what the government hopes for, by ordering BBMP to do this. It may as well order the rains to stop! Keeping a city pothole-free is not difficult. But that requires doing a few things right to BEGIN with. The responses after things go wrong won't help. The only thing we can hope for in 10 days is to see whether the government and the BBMP begin to do things differently in the way construction and maintenance contracts are set up for roads and footpaths.…

So what does it mean to open a superbike in a city where roads are a death trap even for the normal ones? I have been a biker from the time I was in college. The feeling of being free with the air in your face was an unparalleled experience and I was hooked after my ride. My first bike that was a Yamaha RX and there was no looking back from there on. I have owned a number of bikes—the Royal Enfield Thunderbird, Duke 390, Kawasaki Ninja 650, Yamaha R15 , Kawasaki Ninja 1000 and the Triumph Daytona 675r.…

About a year ago, the government of Karnataka approved a steel flyover road that would run from Basaveshwara Circle till the Kempapura junction after the Hebbal interchange, to ease the traffic congestion leading to the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) which was estimated to cost a whopping Rs 2,100 crore. Little did they know this project would become a lynchpin that would energise citizen activism like never before. Thousands of people came out on an early Sunday morning to form a human chain and tell their government that it was a terrible idea. The offset of a collective awareness that Bengalureans…

There's no denying that butterflies bring touches of bright colour to a dull, rainy day. At the Valley School near Bengaluru, on Gandhi Jayanti, (2 October 2017) we were singing the Blues.... Blues are Lyacaenid butterflies, which show a bright blue colour when flying (and which is often hidden when they alight and fold their wings.)  As Wikipedia puts it, Lyacaenidae is the second-largest family of butterflies (behind Nymphalidae, brush-footed butterflies), with over 6,000 species worldwide, whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies. They constitute about 30% of the known butterfly species. Some species among them are known to be…

Over the last few decades, we are witnessing how in the name of development our communities are being destroyed and our neighbourhoods transformed. This stems from the negligence and continued apathy of public officials and crippling of government institutions. Cities exist for its citizens, and all modern cities work on that fundamental principle. It is thus imperative that we, citizens of Bengaluru, have to take up on ourselves; to fight against massive corruption and institutional failure, misuse of public assets, deeply entrenched vested interests and the nexus of builders with public officials. Swarajya in association with Namma Bengaluru Foundation and…

“I cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples” - Mother Teresa We “Swachh Elita Swachh Bharat” volunteers are working for good environment from 2014. We have completed our 1000 days in month of August 2017. Elita Promenade Apartment is prime complex in J P Nagar 7th Phase, South Bengaluru with 1573 apartments. All the residents’ and Owners Association's participation and co-operation made the programme a great success. Our main initiatives are “Two Bin+One Bag – waste segregation with colour code bins” , “PLASTIC FREE ELITA” and “SWASTHA elita (Healthy elita)”.…

The recent astronomical hike in tomato prices in the city weighed heavily on the household budgets of many Bengalureans. Here’s a look at some reactions to this price shock: “I usually go to the Yeshwanthpur city market to buy vegetables because it's much cheaper to buy from there. I was buying ½ kg of tomato when the prices shot up instead of my usual purchase of 2-3 kgs per week. The prices of vegetables fluctuate so much. On the day the rate is cheaper, I buy in bulk and preserve the vegetables at home.” - Housekeeping staff at a private company.…