City: Bengaluru

In Part I of this series, Citizen Matters blew the lid off the IISc report that revealed the encroachment of a major Rajakaluve by the SEZ project by Manipal ETA Infotech Pvt Ltd. This part will explain the random changes made by the BDA in the status of the project land, resulting in a change of status, from being a ‘valley zone' to an industrial area. The site has seen some rapid changes in the last decade. In ‘95, BDA had classified this land as largely residential and park area. In 2005, BDA started revising its master plan. In the…

A woman sits with her ten-month-old baby. It's lunch time. Even as the hot afternoon sun beats down on her face, she quickly covers the baby with her veil protecting him from the sun. A huge apartment complex is under construction. There are over 12 workers there, not to mention two toddlers of around two years running behind their mother. She has just finished eating and resuming her work. She shouts at them to stop yelling. They don't.Two youngsters aged 16-17 lose their grip over the cement bag they are carrying and it rips apart. There are two more couples,…

Who doesn't love getting a chance to hear his/her own language, in a far-off place? Across the world today, niche radio market has found its own place, some of the channels choosing to serve non-native residents. Mauritius has Radio Plus Indiz that broadcasts in Hindi, Bhojpuri, Tamil and Telugu from 1 pm to 3 pm every day. Radio Punjab focusses on South-Asian population in Canada. There are Italian and Spanish radio stations in the USA.Citizen Matters, through this two-part series, tries to explore why Bangalore, though tagged as being ‘cosmopolitan' and having seven FM channels, doesn't have any space for…

Finally the waste from hotels seems to be finding a useful way of disposal. The Bruhat Bangalore Hotel Association (BBHA) and Nobel Exchange Environment Solutions (NEX), a company working on waste management solutions, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with BBMP to develop a garbage treatment plant at Kannahali, 161 km away from the city, on 28 May 2013.At present 1,300 hotels are registered under the government-recognised hotels' association. Hotels, catering units and other food-related organisations come under the purview of BBHA. They generate almost 1000- 2000 tonnes of waste every day. Out of this, 250 tonnes will be sent to…

Pavan, a Bangalore-based sales professional in a company working as regional manager for India, needs to travel frequently to other cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune. If he has to catch the early morning flight to Delhi, he needs to reach the airport at 5.15am, which is not easy. There are limited number of buses at that hour; waiting for them is not a wise thing. Pavan has an easy solution: Book a cab to the airport the previous day. Shekhar Mahadev, a software engineer working in Bangalore, says, “I have to keep making a lot of trips to…

Frail women carrying bricks or sand on their head and walking in the heat, sometimes with a small kid tagging along. Men in dusty, faded clothes with dry, rough hands smearing cement on the well-laid bricks or sprinkling water on a building that has just been cemented. This is a pretty common sight in a city like Bangalore that is ever-growing, ever-expanding and constantly in the process of being built or rebuilt. Building construction workers are growing in numbers every day, with constructions going on in any given road at any point in time. Labourers at work in the construction…

Judging by the online discussions generated by citizens of Bengaluru, on the pros and cons of the agenda drawn up by the Bengaluru Political Action Committee(BPAC) it is clear that there are quite a few residents who are interested in finding solution to the multiple ills that beset the metropolis - from mounds of garbage to choked traffic and scams in every department of the administration. And since not everyone who is concerned about this degeneration makes online inputs, the number of citizens who would like to lend a hand with pulling Bengaluru out of the current mess, must be…

For Bangalore-based ecologist Harini Nagendra, whose name has just been announced as a winner of the 2013 Elinor Ostrom award, it is a bittersweet moment. Harini Nagendra and Dr. Ostrom at Kaikondrahalli Lake. Pic: Priya Ramasubban. The award has been instituted in the name of Elinor Ostrom, the USA-based scholar who received the Nobel Prize for economics in 2009 for her long standing body of work on the governance of the commons. For Harini, Elinor was, apart from being one of the most brilliant, incisive and deeply humanistic scholars, a very dear friend, collaborator and mentor with whom she worked…

It is said that Bangalore had more than 250 lakes and tanks. With the rapid expansion of the city, lakes have been disappearing at an alarming rate. However the story of Kaikondrahalli Kere is quite different. In the year 2009, Kaikondrahalli Kere situated on Sarjapur Road was practically dry and reduced to a swamp with some birdlife and a reasonable biodiversity. If it had been left as it was, it was just a matter of time before the lake died and all the bird life would have disappeared. In order to save the lake, a rejuvenation project was taken up…

When I quit full-time work to bring up the babies, I often wondered how difficult or impossible would it be to get back on the career track. Eight years and two brats have taught me how nonsensical that thought was. If you are a full-time mom (and all moms are full-time, whether working or staying at home), you have skills that are valuable in any and every work area. They just haven’t been discovered yet, or else every headhunter would be hunting for new recruits among moms. Here’s why essential, everyday mommy skills would be an asset in any job.…