City: Bengaluru

May 10th 2015, was celebrated as Global Big Day, when, all over the world, birders tried to document as many species of birds as they could in 24 hours.  However, in India, we also  observed Endemic Bird Day on the same date. It’s not every country that can count a lot of endemic birds; we are lucky to have many of them! What are endemic birds? Like any other species of living creatures, endemics are those which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. (we take the south of Asia as the area.)  The tally in India, this year, was 567,…

Pic: Roopa Kulkarni After eating at a restaurant in Gandhi Bazar with his friends, Raghavendra (name changed), a resident of Basavanagudi, kept two currencies of Rs 500 denomination with the bill. The waiter who collected it returned red-faced and blamed Raghavendra as the notes were fake. “I somehow managed to use my debit card, pay the bill and sneak out of the restaurant,” says an embarrassed Raghavendra. Later Raghavendra dropped into Vijaya Bank ATM in Gandhi Bazar with his ATM slip, where he had withdrawn money the previous night. He was sure the forged notes came from this ATM. Without…

44-year-old Seema Rai died in Fortis Hospital on Bannerghatta Road in May 2010, due to complications after a pancreas transplant surgery performed on her. According to latest orders given by the Appropriate Authority and Appellate Authority, the surgery was done without an informed consent of the patient, and without a valid license. Following a five-year-long legal battle over her husband Major Pankaj Rai’s complaint against the hospital to the Appropriate Authority, the Certificate of Registration granted to hospital in March 2010, permitting it to perform transplantation of liver, kidney and homograft, was cancelled.     KMC exonerates the doctors While these…

  Bengaluru this week May 21st 2015     CITIZEN MATTERS Bangalore's own interactive newsmagazine Speak up, it's your city!     Oorvani Foundation had called for funds earlier this year and we were truly overwhelmed by the support we received. Several folks made online transfers without sharing the details of the transfer on mail or on the form. We have sent out the 80G receipts to those folks for whom we had complete details. In case you are yet to receive an acknowledgement, drop us a mail on foundation@oorvani.in with your name, transaction amount and date and we will get…

  May 7th 2015 saw the launch of a unique initiative in Bangalore -  the Neighbourhood Improvement Partnership (NIP) Challenge. Rolled out by United Technologies Corporation (UTC), the challenge is the first of its kind in the country, and calls for a collaboration between citizens and public officials, to identify key civic challenges in their neighbourhoods, and voluntarily contribute time, energy and resources to tackle them. The challenge will be be rolled out by the Centre for Public Problem Solving (CPPS), a division of Imagine Bangalore with support from EMBARQ India. Organisations like BBMP and BPAC are also slated to…

Vijaya Bhaskar, IAS, Administrator, Kumar Naik, IAS, BBMP Commissioner and Darpan Jain, IAS, Joint Commissioner (SWM), BBMP held an interaction with various civil society organisations in which at least one trade union representative participated. The purpose of this interaction was BBMP’s keenness to engage NGOs in its city cleaning drive. Commissoner Kumar Naik explained that the last minute invitation that did not reach many was well-intended at inclusivity of all, though the organising was all last minute, which he agreed the next time around would be done right. Here are the highlights of the meeting: 1) Almost everyone present agreed…

Last Saturday, the city woke up to media reports that Bellandur Lake was on fire. Coincidentally, I happened to bike past the lake early morning on Sunday. I was on my way to Kaikondrahalli Lake where I wanted to spend some time, before biking to Puttenahalli Lake in J P Nagar. It was a big day for the trustees of the Puttenahalli Lake as treated water would be formally released into the water-body that day. It was a milestone in their years of struggle to rejuvenate the lake. In nine months, the lake would have a large amount of water,…

The police on May 8th 2015, filed a charge sheet against a former senior official of Fortis Hospital, Bannerghatta Road, Bengaluru and a government officer, with reference to a case of organ transplantation, where the patient died after the transplant. P K Davison, the Facility Director of Fortis Hospital on Bannerghatta Road, Bengaluru, and Dr V Raju, former deputy director (Medical) in the Office of Appropriate Authority for Organ Transplantation, Government of Karnataka are the accused in the case as per the charge sheet. The records reveal that the police have charged them with colluding and committing forgery on Fortis…

Pic: Aditi Surendra Bengaluru had many lakes 40 years ago. Today there are a very few lakes left today. Most of the lakes like Varthur lake, Sarakki lake, Banaswadi lake etc. have been or are being destroyed because a few greedy, inhuman, insensitive and socially irresponsible people cause wanton destruction and grab the land as real estate prices go sky high. The Varthur lake is being filled with sewage and other chemicals. Once the lake is dead, these people can say the land is unfit to be a lake and use it to construct buildings. This is done to circumvent…

Bengaluru has seen many experiments in urban space management. Tender SURE is one of them that is hitting headlines of late. The idea of Tender SURE was born when the Bangalore City Connect Foundation (BCCF) funded and co-ordinated the design of the Tender SURE concept in the year 2009 and implemented a pilot project on Vittal Mallya Road. After the pilot project’s implementation, the BCCF joined hands with the Government of Karnataka (GoK), the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL), to implement the project on a few more roads. The technical assistance for the…