City: Bengaluru

Meet Rajeshwari aka Raji, age who has been selling vegetables for 30 years now. She has made a thriving family business out of it. Sometimes, one woman's enterprise brings the entire family to progress and some level of prosperity. pic caption pending pic: Deepa Mohan 43-year-old Raji hails from a village near Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu. She moved to Bangalore at a young age, after her marriage. She and her husband got into the vegetable vending business. They used to push a wheeled cart of vegetables through the streets of the city.Around 1995, a new apartment building, called Casa Ansal, came…

Residents of J P Nagar have a reason to smile. B S Angadi, 49, the new Inspector of Police is an accomplished officer with major international experience. In this exclusive interview with Citizen Matters, he talks about his experiences and the challenges in his job.  A native of north Karnataka, he joined the police force 1990. He is a BCom and an LLM graduate, with four years experience as an advocate before joining the police force. With experience and skills in sharp shooting, driving and English language, he was chosen by the UN peacekeeping mission in May 2002 to serve…

A week long musical treat is in store at Shree Ramana Maharishi Academy, 3rd cross, 3rd phase, JP Nagar, from January 23rd. The event, ‘Aradhana Sapthaha' will witness about 60 musicians delivering vocals, whistling and instrumental music, over 6 days, under the guidance and expertise of Vidwans and Vidushis in Carnatic classical music. The stage will be on a high octane drive with all the musicians delivering Purandaradasa, Thyagaraja, Muthuswamy Dikshithar, Shyamashastry, Jayachamaraja and Kanakadasa's krithis. The concerts are organised by the BTM cultural academy. The vocalists and instrumentalists are disciples of very well known names in carnatic classical music.…

During the last decade the incidence of suicides in India has increased from 108,593 in 2000 to 134,599 in 2010 (23.8% change). Pic: wikimedia/commons Suicides and attempted suicides are far more common amongst males, those with depression, failed relationships, excessive alcohol abuse, loss of rational thinking, financial loss and/or inability to manage finances, lack of social support, not coming up to expectations of those who matter and more.Suicides have a social, cultural, and economic background. Thus, while farmer suicides may be a phenomenon in some states, children dying by suicides especially following declaration of examination results is an expression of…

Garbage collection in the city is currently broken because BBMP is not awarding long overdue new tenders. Contractors have been jamming the July 2011-initiated tender process with objections for months now. A Citizen Matters inquiry has exposed that BBMP has diluted the terms of engagement several times in past two months. Pourakarmikas manually handling the garbage in Richmond Town. Pic: Kathyayini Chamaraj A clause which mandated the contractor to submit monthly records of door-to-door collection to BBMP in electronic format, was removed in December. Another clause which imposed a 10-15% of monthly contract value as penalty for one offence of…

BDA started work on Agara-Sirsi Circle signal-free corridor project last year. Work for grade separators was initiated in four Koramangala junctions - Jakkasandra, Koramangala 80 feet road, Krupanidhi College and Koramangala Water Tank. But residents in the area pointed out flaws in the project and managed to get the work stopped temporarily. Nitin Seshadri, a resident, writes... We were first informed in early September about the massive projects planned along Sarjapur road. Citizens' initial reaction was stoic. The typical reaction is exemplified by an email which declared: "let us do what we can to be as patient as possible". In mid-September, we…

The Karnataka government's negligence toward health schemes for migrants working on Namma Metro construction sites can be blamed for a 55 percent rise in respiratory problems among them since 2009. Worse, a metro contractor at one site is using child labour openly. Migrant workers at the metro construction work in dangerous conditions without safety equipment. Pic: Rupsa Chakraborty. Every month the Victoria Hospital at KR Market registers a minimum of 30 to 45 cases of migrant metro workers complaining of respiratory problems.Madhusudan Das, a medical information officer at the hospital, said this is mainly due to their constant exposure to…

Moon Arra Pic: bengaluruhabba.co.in Bengaluru habba kicked off on 11 January, art lovers of Bangalore are in for a beautiful rendezvous with music, culture and art. So, for anyone who would like to get a hold of what's in store, here is a roundup of the bands that’ll be churning out the best of music across various genres, from funk to rock to contemporary and world music. The selected bands/musicians playing at UB city, for Bengaluru Habba are quite literally hand-picked for the expertise in their respective genre of music. Sanjay Divecha - World music will reverberate through Sanjay’s compositions…

It started with an idea - how practical it would be if we could get schools to grow their own gardens. It would not only give children a hands-on experience with organic gardening, pests and plants, but also enable them to enjoy the produce in their mid-day meals. Loyola school teachers at the terrace garden. Pic: S Laxminarayan I discussed this idea with our mentor Dr B N Vishwanath and fellow members of the Garden City Farmers Trust, an NGO working to spread awareness on organic urban farming. We got an immediate thumbs up. Then began my search for funds;…

Back in the early 1980s, against the advice of our friends and relatives in Bangalore, we moved to Yelahanka Satellite Town in the hope of living in peace, fed up of Bangalore's pollution. We compromised a lot for this, putting up with the poor construction quality of KHB, lack of some basic facilities, and distance from city's old airport and culture hubs. Many trees were cut down to accommodate this BBMP office in Yelahanka Satellite Town 1st phase Pic: Sudha Narasimhachar But we were happy the way our layout was planned with lovely parks, and amenities like bus stands, shopping…