City: Bengaluru

Jörn Rhode, German Consul General, Anne-Katrin Fenk, MOD Institute, Rachel Lee, MOD Institute, Habitat Unit @ TU Berlin and Madhavi Desai, CEPT University, Ahmedabad at the launch of OK India. Pic: MOD Institute In early September 2015, MOD Institute, an urban action and research institute based in Berlin and Bengaluru, and the German Consulate General Bengaluru, released the book, Otto Koenigsberger: Architecture and Urban Visions in INDIA. The books traces German architect Otto Koenigsberger’s time in India, and how his planning and design concepts continue to be relevant for urban development in India even today. Koenigsberger in India Story has…

Counsels of Mantri Developers have tendered an unconditional apology in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday, October 6th, 2015, with regard to the contempt case filed against them. Namma Bengaluru Foundation and Forward Foundation had filed the contempt case in the NGT after an expert committee member was reportedly stopped from entering Mantri Developers site at Agara in Bengaluru for inspection and his GPS device was snatched. According to the order posted on the NGT website, legal Advisor of Mantri Developers Bhubnendra tendered an unconditional apology. Mantri Developers Managing Director Sushil Mantri who was present in the court, along…

Women corporators have outnumbered men in the new BBMP council. Pic: Akshatha M “As a teacher, I have always practised discipline, cleanliness and hygiene. This does not satisfy me enough, I want to render my service across Bengaluru. Hold the vision, trust the process.” These were the words of an aspiring corporator candidate who filled our Candidate Survey form, before BBMP elections. A B A-Tch graduate, she appeared to be a confident and strong woman in the candidate information form. The form was quite impressively filled. Now she has won the election and is a corporator. With a hope to…

“This Dusshera, my aim is to try and ease Bangalore’s hunger problem.” So begins Mahita Fernandez’ post on the Facebook group “Feed Your Neighbour”. Pic: facebook.com/groups/421419554714295 The idea for the initiative, Feed Your Neighbour (FYN), came to Mahita in the wee hours of a night when she woke up hungry. She says, “I woke up with a rumbling stomach around 3 am and felt thankful that I had food to eat. I then thought about the thousands in the city who are probably hungry and have nothing to eat. The very next morning, I put down the idea on paper…

Early this century, Whitefield caught the attention of the world with the setting up of IT Parks and world-class gated ­­­communities. It became a symbol of modern India, a hub of smartness. Whitefielders, including techies and farmers, immigrants and locals, rich and poor, bicyclists and water tanker drivers, are still working hard to stay in the limelight. It’s hard to stay in the limelight by creating a few startups and a couple of fancy homes, Whitefielders have found. It’s easier to gain attention by extraordinary egregious behaviour as a community – lessons learned from the reality TV shows. Famous lake…

Alamelu works in one of the flats in a nearby apartment complex. After returning to her home in Swatantrapalya, she prepares incense sticks. Pics: Shree D N Sitting on the floor in her two-room house in Ragigudda EWS quarters, Rajeshwari N, a domestic worker and mother of two, says that she hopes to leave the locality within next two-three years. She has borrowed over Rs 2 lakh to pay the Slum Board for house allotment and to pay off her relatives who wanted to stake claim to the house. Rajeshwari has been living in the area–which was Ragigudda slum earlier–for…

Pic: Sameer Shisodia The vehicle-free street initiative being tried out at HSR layout as an experiment is a good idea, for reclaiming common spaces. Its success and viability, however, depends on ‘we, the people’, who are responsible for making it workable. It can be done, and I have seen it working elsewhere. In Cambridge (UK), car owners park their vehicles on the periphery of the city and take feeder buses so that the city centre doesn’t get clogged. No one grumbles; no one seeks exemption; no one tries to break the rules. No fare concessions are offered, either. Around Harvard…

  Bengaluru this week October 1st 2015     CITIZEN MATTERS Bangalore's own interactive newsmagazine Speak up, it's your city!     This week’s highlight: Reality behind dengue numbers in Bengaluru Almost every Bangalorean either knows of somebody who has had dengue or has suffered from the disease themselves. However, the official figure is pegged at 1,249 cases in 2015 until now. So what is the reality? Here’s an in-depth analysis on the incidence of dengue in Bengaluru. Read: Just 1249 dengue cases in Bengaluru since January. Really? Looking after elders Not always a walk in the park. Pic: Gopal MS…

Patients waiting for their turn at the outpatient department in K C General Hospital. Pic: Shree D N What could be the number of people who suffered from dengue in Bengaluru? Out of 443 people who saw a quick survey conducted by Citizen Matters, 171 people replied positively about dengue cases. As many as 20 of them said they themselves got dengue since January 2015. This makes for a percentage of 4.5 cases of dengue on the readership of the survey. If 4.5% of the population in Bengaluru suffered dengue, what could be the numbers? How many might have died?…

We witness a beautiful aerial stream of butterflies between March and May, and once again between September and November. These butterflies are not, like other wildlife, only to be found in the forests; you can often see them floating around you, and past you, as you walk in the city.  The most common butterflies that migrate twice a year are the Blue Tiger, and the Common Crow. The Common Crow is a dark brown, almost black butterfly; but the Blue Tiger is a blue jewel!  You can see them clustering on some plants even in uncultivated fields. The butterflies migrate…