City: Bengaluru

That plastic is at the root of our waste woes and in fact, of most environmental risks besieging the planet today is well-acknowledged. In Bengaluru, even before the official ban on plastic by the state government, alert neighbourhoods and citizen groups had started their own campaigns against the use of plastic. However much of the dialogue that one gets to hear is against the use of plastic 'carry-bags' that most people have grown used to. While these pose a menace indeed, are the ubiquitious plastic bags (polythene) the only form of plastic that ends up in our landfills? If we…

A solidarity meeting was held at the Institute of Agricultural Technologists on Queen’s Road on 13th November 2016 for farmers across Karnataka who are suffering from acute drought in the last two years. This meeting is part of an effort to engage those who influence public opinion, such as writers, academics, journalists and any other professional in towns/cities to the farmers’ struggle as part of the ‘Bengaluru stands with the farmers in distress’ campaign. Chukki Nanjunda Swamy, Dr Vasu, Geethamma, K T Gangadhar, Prakash Kalmadi and other eminent people spoke about the problems the farmers are facing and how to overcome the drought…

It was supposed to be a quick route to get to South Bengaluru from the western part of the city, which it was during the 90s, when the portion of Ring Road linking Bannerghatta Road to Mysore Road opened. I was pursuing my post-graduation at a business school in JP Nagar then and would manage to reach Banashankari and JP Nagar that were next to the same road, in just half an hour from Vijayanagar even in the early 2000s. However, things started going downhill around 2003. My rides got longer. I relocated to Hyderabad in 2004 and was relieved…

Recently, in the midst of the furore over the Government of Karnataka’s ‘Steel Flyover’ announcement and the subsequent ‘BEDA’ protest that hogged headlines as well as social media space, the launch of a new railway station on Bengaluru’s map went quietly unnoticed. The brand new Hoodi Railway Station was inaugurated on September 29, 2016 by P C Mohan, Member of Parliament for Bengaluru Central Loksabha constituency, and MLA of Mahadevpura Arvind Limbavali and Sanjeev Agarwal, Deputy Regional Manager (DRM), South Western Railway. Pic: Khader Syed Hoodi is situated between K R Puram and Whitefield. It is home to Bengaluru’s IT…

Editor's note: We at Oorvani Foundation believe that it is important to give voice to all sides of a debate to make informed debates possible. Hence we provide space for multiple views, but the Foundation does not have any view of its own on any of the topics covered. Proposed elevated corridor network. Source: R K Misra As someone who wrote an article here on Citizen Matters supporting the Hebbal-Chalukya flyover, I wish to reply to this article by Prakash Belawadi and Naresh Narasimhan. To begin with, all the arguments I made on why civil society in Bengaluru should in…

Bengaluru’s water woes may only get worse this time. Though summer is still three months away, thanks to scanty rainfall, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has already hinted at the city facing acute water crisis coming April. In fact, for the first time ever, the BWSSB has come up with a contingency plan predicting a bad season ahead. It has already submitted a contingency plan of Rs 75 crore to the State government for taking up water related works for the city. BWSSB Chairman Tushar Girinath, speaking at a meeting on water issues in Bengaluru convened at…

Editor's note: We at Oorvani Foundation believe that it is important to give voice to all sides of a debate to make informed debates possible. Hence we provide space for multiple views, but the Foundation does not have any view of its own on any of the topics covered. R K Misra's defence of the elevated corridors project, 'Elevated corridors will facilitate public transport' (Citizen Matters, 19 November 2016) is untenable because it is not supported by data or current expert opinion on sustainable urban mobility from anywhere in the world. Frankly, it seems out of date. The project in…

The Bengaluru City Traffic Police has definitely made best use of technology, to make their task of enforcing rules and collecting fines easier, with the 'Enforcement Automation Centre', which issues/delivers traffic violation notices to ones doorstep. However there seem to be some aspects where improvement is possible, which will help an offender to understand their offence and pay up for it. First, the notice provides no information on the police station which has issued this notice. So, if the offender needs more information about the offence, they will first have to visit the closest traffic police station and enquire, during…

  A red high heel, a tomato, a snake, a burger. Each of these emojis has a distinct meaning for the 'TrainSpotters,' a group of commuters who use instant messenger application, Telegram, to help each other pin down the location of Bengaluru-Hosur trains. Here's how it works: one among the 1,900 plus members types a symbol—the turtle emoji if they are waiting for the Kurla Express, for example— and sends it to the TrainSpotters group chat on Telegram. Either a bot fetches the information from the government-run rail website and posts it to the group, or another person who is…

The ‘Steel flyover’ issue took Bengaluru city by storm. The focus of the activists is now extended to all other elevated projects coming up in the city, announced years ago but mired in secrecy, with little information on public domain. One such major project is a network of five elevated corridors, anounced by the Chief Minister in his speech for Budget 2016-2017. One person who has been pushing for this project is Rajendra Kumar Misra, or RK Misra as he is popularly known in elite circles of Bengaluru. He has been the member of BBMP’s Technical Advisory Committee since 2011.…