City: Bengaluru

Garbage is creating a lot of noise in Bangalore these days. It is the biggest nuisance that development causes in all urban centres. Drive to an interior village (other than the village where your city dumps the garbage, of course) and you will find it pretty clean, as compared to your own neighbourhood, where mounds of plastic garbage lie strewn beside every posh apartment complex or housing locality! Even in villages, the garbage that you spot mostly contains plastic bags which have entered the lives of the rural folk too. Other than that, most of the garbage collected in a…

Inderjeet Singh Arora, a 26-year-old IT professional recently inquired about purchasing a washing machine in one of the large format retail showrooms in Bangalore. The sales executive showed him various washing machines; from semi automatics to fully automatics. Even though he had multiple choices, Inderjeet couldn't pick the best one suitable to his needs. Many of us get stuck in similar situations. Our lifestyle needs, water and power consumption, noise generated from the machine, installation area required, frequency of usage, quantity of clothes and etc. are the major factors to buy a washing machine. Often, buying decisions are driven by…

Read: Most recent report on dengue - Dengue reduced to a “common” viral disease in Bengaluru Recently, Abhimanyu Singh (name changed), a resident of Basaveshwara Nagar was suspected of dengue fever and admitted in M S Ramaiah Hospital, one of the major hospitals in Bangalore. In one day, his blood platelet count dropped steeply, from 2.4 lakh to 56,000, symptomatic of dengue. People in the waiting room at K C General Hospital in Malleshwaram. pic: Vaishnavi Vittal Doctors kept a close watch on the patient and geared up for a platelet transfusion if the platelet count dipped any further. The…

Twenty days after BBMP issued his transfer, Brijesh Kumar, Chief Conservator of Forests (CCF) was able to get a stay on it. The state government's Urban Development Department (UDD) issued the stay, saying that BBMP could not make the decision on its own.In the order, written in Kannada, UDD clearly says that BBMP's decision was unilateral, and that no permission was asked from UDD. It was UDD that had passed the initial orders to create the new CCF position in BBMP, and to appoint IFS officer Kumar to it.BBMP had issued Kumar's transfer order on October 11th, and the officer…

BBMP has said that cluster housing societies (apartments or villas) have to manage their own garbage. These housing complexes do not even have the public water supply system. However, the residents of these clusters are not exempt from any tax or cess to be paid to the BBMP, including the so-called development expenses. How fair is this? Who has to supervise whether these clusters really segregate wet and dry waste and dispose them in the right manner? With uncontrolled growth, city authorities are not able to provide the infrastructural support. Pic Sudha Narasimhachar Wet waste management may be supervised by…

This month, new contractors will start garbage clearance work in 168 wards in the city. These wards are covered in 77 packages. Fifty of the 77 packages have gone to a single company, named BVG India Pvt Ltd. This company has also bid for extremely low amounts in most packages. In one case, its bid amount was 50% lesser than BBMP's estimated amount. The corporate office of BVG India in Vasanth Nagar. This company won the highest number of garbage tenders in the city. Pic: Navya P K But there is another story behind these low amounts - BVG seems…

At Sobha Althea & Azalea, we are a motley group of women coming from various backgrounds. We were thinking of putting a waste management system in place even before the BBMP legislation came into force. But for some reasons, it didn't take off.The legislation was just the kind of nudge we needed to get going and start thinking about the HOWs and WHYs. How to startNon-negotiablesNegotiablesTraining A string of meetings helped us frame certain guidelines for our own residential community while keeping in mind the larger picture: A waste-free zone. Housekeeping staff are key to the success of any waste…

All of us are looking forward to Diwali this year aren't we? The bursting of crackers and sentimental pooja truly makes this occasion special. But there are many others out there who don't get this chance. So I decided to do something about this. As Diwali celebrations are coming up, my mum had been asking me to dispose of my huge collections of comics and story books, my old school books, clean up my room and get rid of what she calls all the junk. I thought, why not put some of this stuff to some good use. I reached…

The festive season is on and boarding a train towards your destination seems almost impossible. Almost all the trains have lengthy waiting list and if anyone has not planned in advance, it could be a nightmare.Deepavali is around the corner, and celebrated in almost all north Indian places. This is also the season for the annual pilgrimage to Sabarimala. Trains to Delhi, Howrah, Patna etc., show long waiting lists. The situation seems painful to an extent that people are willing to pay hefty amounts to touts for a ticket confirmation. File photo of the passengers waiting to board the train.…

Last year he called it Holiween. I didn't make any attempts to correct him and he didn't remember it beyond that point either. Why bother when it isn't a festival that belongs to us? Pic: wikimedia commons This year, he is close to seven and the Halloween monster has struck us hard. We now know the correct pronunciation and the fact that it's an American festival that has "something to do with ghosts". We also know somewhat hazily about pumpkins and trick or treat. The problem is we live in an apartment complex that isn't as Halloween friendly as the…