City: Bengaluru

Adventure: Taking the photo of a friend while cycling! Pic: Shree D N “As I was drinking my cup of coffee in the morning, had the pleasant surprise of seeing kids and one or two adults cycling on 13th cross. Learnt about the event now!”, posts Latha Vidyaranya, a resident of 13th cross, Malleshwaram, on Facebook. She was not the only one to be surprised. Even as half the population in Malleshwaram was huddled in their cozy blankets on the cold Sunday morning of December 7th, the ringing of cycle bells—a rather rare phenomena these days in this vicinity—woke them…

Citizen Matters co-founder Meera K receiving Manthan award in News Delhi. Pic: Navya P K On the evening of December 4th, Citizen Matters won yet another award. The tally, including reporting awards won by our erstwhile reporters Navya P K, Vaishnavi Vittal and Supriya Khandekar, is now six, in six years. The last five have come in three years. It is an even split now between awards for individual storytelling and for the publication itself. What do these awards mean to me, a journalism entrepreneur and innovator? One way to answer this question is to see what our work has…

As urban sprawl in India unfolds at a frantic pace, it’s quite natural to ask: where does a city begin and where does it end? What is the spatial terrain that makes up a city? What should the boundaries of the city government be? These are some fundamental questions that need to be considered while discussing urban governance. These questions become all the more relevant at a time when there are discussions for the division of a city such as Bengaluru into two or three different municipal corporations. While questions on the institutional form of the city government have received…

State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) has recommended environmental clearance for the first phase of the Bangalore Development Authority’s much-awaited Peripheral Ring Road project that will run from Tumkur Road to Hosur Road. Did you like this article? Help us publish more such articles. Support Oorvani Foundation! With this, the options that can help commuters avoid the city centre will increase, while real estate rates around the Peripheral Ring Road are expected to rise higher. This is meant to destress the Outer Ring Road, even as Bengaluru has been expanding without limits. BDA's Peripheral Ring Road will connect Tumkur Road…

Citizen Matters co-founder Meera K receiving Manthan award in New Delhi. Pic: Navya P K This is yet another feather in our cap—and your cap too! Your own web magazine for city and hyperlocal news, Citizen Matters, has won its sixth award in its sixth year. Support us today Oorvani Media, the company that publishes Citizen Matters, began its journey as an angel-investor funded startup. We are indebted to the original angel Bangaloreans who helped us develop this news magazine as a platform for hyperlocal news, between 2009-2013.Today our journalism is completely funded out of Oorvani Foundation, a non-profit charitable…

The Subramaniam Committee has prepared and submitted its report on amending environment and forest-related laws. The leaked report, a copy of which is with Citizen Matters is uploaded below. It can be recalled that this committee walked out of a public hearing in Vikasa Soudha in Bengaluru last month, when green activists threw many questions about the mandate of the committee and other issues. The main hearing did not take place,though there were many other hearings that actually took place in Bengaluru. If you have anything to say about the report, do comment below the article, or mail us expressing…

  Bengaluru this week December 4th 2014     CITIZEN MATTERS Bangalore's own interactive newsmagazine Speak up, it's your city!     We’re glad to inform you that your community news magazine, Citizen Matters, has made it to the shortlist of the Manthan Awards (South Asia and Asia Pacific), in the e-News and Journalism category. Our co-founder Meera K is presently in Delhi to attend the summit. In August 2014, we won the Manthan Award (South West India) in the same category. City news that matters And before the summary of our own stories, here’s a curation of the latest news…

Sometimes people do not encounter problems; but rather problems have a way of finding those who have the vision and resolve to make the world a better place. That’s what happened to Prateek Kaul and Prarthana Prateek Kaul, when they were working on an event with blind kids and had to struggle in order to arrange for appropriate gifts for them.  Prarthana and Prateek Kaul of GiftAbled Foundation at an event This made them think of what would happen if a sighted person wanted to give a card to a blind person. If it was a card with words, the…

WR Open House. Come see what this is all about! A year and a half of existence. Over 40 projects initiated. 4500 Facebook members. Over 100 active doers. Increasing visibility for Whitefield. Good engagement with Government. Brookefield, Hoodi and ECC Rising are emerging. Postive changes happening, slowly but surely. Come join and instantly be a part of the change. There are no fees, no mandates, no organization structure. Its not an NGO, a trust or a club. Its just like minded residents that have had enough of the status quo and want to make a difference. Come, engage and empower…

On November 26 and in the days before, police in Bangalore, India, rounded up more than 150 hijras and put them in a concentration camp. (Hijra is a traditional term, across much of South Asia, for people born males who who identify either as women or as a third gender.)  At Orinam, an online resource for LGBT issues in India, human rights lawyer Gowthaman Ranganathan tells the story: Approximately 167 members of the transgender community have been taken away by the police and kept at the Beggars’ colony. These detentions have been entirely arbitrary … Most detainees were not on the streets begging or doing any act that is prohibited…