City: Bengaluru

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…

The residents of Chaithanya Samarpan layout at Kadugodi, north of Whitefield, started smiling in late May when pre-monsoon showers blessed Bengaluru and then continued into June. Water stopped in a storm water drain. It gets diverted into the collection chambers through the PVC pipe shown. Pics: Rainwater Concepts. But their smiles were not just because the rain brought much-awaited respite from the heat wave of April and May. It was because earlier this year the Samarpan owners' association had initiated a massive rainwater harvesting project for the layout. A network of water trapping, filtering and harvesting structures were built underground.…

The dug footpath with tree trunks at the Sunkadakatte main road leaves no space for pedestrians. Pic: Bosky Khanna For Bhavya K, a resident of Sunkadakatte, Magadi Road, travelling on a mere 2-km stretch till Sumanahalli flyover takes around 45 minutes. The reason: the road is dug by the civic agencies for widening and laying pipelines. This is not all - the road is also filled with potholes and resembles nothing less than a death trap. She was even more shocked on Thursday, June 13, 2013, when she saw three big trees cut to the stump and logs piled up…

Your neighbourhood lake where your mother and her siblings went swimming and fishing is now a multi-storied office complex with a sports stadium next to it. You yourself can remember the place as one where you sailed your little paper boats and from where you excitedly brought home guppies and tadpoles to put into your house pond. Thankfully, there is still some untouched space there – a playground with a few old trees, where boys and girls can play cricket, kick around footballs or just sit and talk. Yes, I’m reminiscing about the Akkithimanahalli “Mud Tank” in Richmond Town, which…

In 2011, the United Nations launched the Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020) and urged all countries to organise programmes in the name of "UN Road Safety Week" from 6th-12th May. The theme selected for this year’s campaign is "pedestrian safety" with the aim of creating awareness around the world for the safety of youth on the road. It is dedicated to the memory of Zenani Mandela, the great granddaughter of Winnie Madzikela and Nelson Mandela who was killed in a road accident on 11th June 2010. This campaign aims to spread awareness on pedestrian rights and safety which…

As always, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has come under fire this time too, from Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) of India. One of the reasons is the incomplete underpass at the C N Rao Circle in Bangalore, which was to be completed by March 2009. Even after five years and escalated project costs, the underpass is yet to be completed. RELATEDCAG's indictment of HDK and Yeddy is gory in detail It is difficult not to notice the underpass construction at the C N Rao Circle near prestigious Indian Institute of Science. The work that was supposed to be completed five…

BESCOM MD,Manivannan P engaged the audience with game that illustrated the functioning of the government, private sector and how government should work. Pic courtesy: The Alternative The residents of various apartments in Bangalore assembled in The Energy and Resource Institute campus in Domlur on Saturday, 15 June 2013, at a campaign for self-sufficient apartment communities, initiated by Apartment Adda and The Alternative. Experts and intellectuals from various arenas were also present to discuss various obstacles faced by the bulk waste generators, specifically apartments. Recently, There has been buzz in the city apartments about sustainable consumption of water and energy and…

The garden city that’s on the fast track to become garbage city has finally started understanding the importance of composting and recycling. Karnataka Compost Development Corporation, dedicated to composting, has come back to the limelight, by accepting extra organic waste. A Muniraj, Technical Head, Karnataka Compost Development Corporation, who has been serving the firm since 1976, explained the composting process followed at the KCDC. The KCDC has two microbial compost processing units and 300 pits that generate 200 tons of manure per day. Composting here is done by two methods - aerobic and vermi-compost.   Aerobic composting Aerobic compost involves…

Open the day’s newspaper, or switch on the TV, and what you get is a series of reports on some scam or the other - politicians exposed for their roles in illegal sanctions, nepotism, unaccounted money. However, I find the ‘other’ news reports, about non-political, social aberrations, equally alarming and distressing. The first week of June in particular saw a series of such reports that hold up a mirror to what is happening in the city, right next door to us, in so-called ‘ordinary’, nameless middle class urban families. On June 4, the police “rescued a naked woman in her…