City: Bengaluru

Recognizing that accidents are one of the biggest killers of children in India is paramount to preventing thousands of hospital admissions, hundreds of deaths and disabilities every week, in children. Understanding that many of these are avoidable is important to provide a safe environment to nurture our children before they are scarred for ever. With the objective of ensuring a safe and healthy environment for our children and to enable them to lead more active lives, Dr Supraja Chandrasekar, an oncosurgeon in Bangalore and Ilaunched the Safe Children Mission. Our plan of action includes increasing awareness among caregivers, providing safety…

BWSSB Chairman Gaurav Das Gupta declared that the peripheral areas of Bengaluru do not and will not have water for the upcoming years. Gaurav Gupta was taken on by veteran bureaucrat, former additional chief secretary of Government of Karnataka, V Balasubramanian, in the discussion ­The Critical water situation in Bangalore- The way forward conducted by Bangalore International Centreat Domlur. Both of them discussed the alarming water crisis in Bangalore and its consumption. It was moderated by former chief justice of India M N Venkatachalaiah. In the wake of acute water crisis, BWSSB Chief told the gathering: “If you are taking…

"All my family members are there, I do not know what will happen to them and me,” weeps 74-year-old V Ravichandra, a resident of Yelachenahalli. He is waiting for the last five days to hear from his family which travelled to Badrinath, as part of the Char-Dham yatra. "My two grandchildren, aged four and nine years, are missing, along with my son and daughter-in-law. My family members have not been rescued. All I heard was that five people from their group of 19 have been rescued. But these do not include my family members,” said Ravichandra.Ravichandra himself has visited Uttarakhand…

‘Whitefield Rising - Waste Management Team’ conducted their maiden seminar on June 15th,　2013 at The Whitefield Club.It was attended by the Corporator of Hagadur Ward, Mr H A Srinivas and several Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanaga Palike (BBMP) officials -Devaraju, Joint Commissioner, BBMP; Vinayaka, Environmental Engineer, BBMP, Sidalinge Gowda, Executive Engineer, BBMP, Whitefield, Devaraj, Health Inspector, and Kalpana, Health Officer. R. K Misra, (Founder of Nav Bharat and　SAHYOG - Indian Council for PPP) along with over 100 residents of the Whitefield area including communities such as Adarsh Palm Meadows, Waterwoods, Waterville, Renaissance Jagrithi, Vaswani Pinnacle, Brigade Metropolis, Prestige Shantiniketan, Laughing Waters, Shobha…

Getting out and around in Bangalore is no mean feat for anyone, nowadays. Every part of the city seems to be competing for the level of madness that is created on its roads, junctions and bus stops. And my beloved area Marathahalli (Brookefield) where I have lived for 8 years has a strong contender in the Marathahalli Outer Ring Road (ORR) intersection. The region has been plagued with traffic issues since the railway overbridge (ROB) construction started in June 2006 and ended in April 2008. If the traffic pile up then was traumatic, the traffic flow now is horrific. The…

Tariffs are the single most important economic tool to control individual resident’s water usage. Many apartments often bundle water charges into a single maintenance account. But this keeps the expense of water consumption invisible. RWAs must have a Cost Account for water separately. RWA Management Committees need to consider various parameters to arrive at the tariff. What cannot be measured cannot be managed. The first step is to measure water consumption and calculate the total cost for getting water into a resident's flat. See part 1 of this series: Where does Bangalore get its water from? To read, click here.…

Observe the stretch coming down on Sarjapura Outer Ring road from Agara going towards Ibblur Sarjapura/ ORR junction. As the road veers towards the left, you may have seen a beautiful serene lake a few years back. Now, all that is left to see is a bed of water hyacinth, with sewage incessantly flowing into the lake and heaps of garbage dumped into the lake. Ibblur kere is a sad story of neglect. Local residents recall a beautiful lake till 2009 with migratory birds visiting during the winter months. Then, it all changed. As the development in neighbouring Ambalipura and…

Complaining about the lakes we are losing? Meet Bangaloreans who saved their neighbourhood lake and brought the birds back! See how citizens can participate in bringing about change.  The Rang De Bangalore Chapter is organizing 'A Walk with a Changemaker' with Ms. Usha Rajagopalan this Sunday, the 23rd of June, 2013 at the Puttenahalli Lake. Usha Rajagopalan, who spearheaded the Puttenahalli Neighborhood Lake Improvement Trust (PNLIT), will share her story, the challenges faced and the hardships they overcame for the successes of the project. The Rang De Bangalore Chapter is a group of interesting and enthusiastic folks from the city that believe in the power of microcredit want to…

It is common knowledge that India is passing through a tumultuous period in her democratic governance. Though postmodern democracy has many drawbacks and has been dominantly designed by many nations, it needs to be recognized that the world in our times has irreversibly arrived at democracy as the most acknowledged healthy way of governing nation states. It is also recognized that most nation states have adopted representative democracy as a pragmatic way of respecting citizen’s power. In the evolution of representative democracy several types of electoral systems have been invented, developed, modified etc. Nations with known dominant ideologies have developed…

Time is now ripe for bringing in systemic changes and strategies to take Bengaluru on a road towards a sustainable solution for handling and processing of solid waste according to the MSW Rules 2000 notified by the Ministry of Environment & Forests. As an important step towards managing Municipal Solid Waste Management (SWM) as well as to evolve and implement strategies and action plan for Bengaluru getting back its glory as a clean and green city, the Government of Karnataka, Urban Development Department constituted an Expert Committee (EC) under the Chairmanship of Commissioner, BBMP and seven other experts to advise…