City: Bengaluru

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…

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike's Rs 600 million garbage segregation plant at Subbarayanpalya, an interior village in Kumbalgudu, which should have been completed by the end of 2011, is still at the tender stage. The area is near Rajarajeshwari Nagar in SW Bengaluru. Sixty-five trucks reportedly visit this site daily to dump waste from Bangalore. Pic: Sankar C G As per information from the BBMP website, the tender process for the 750 metric-tons-per-day plant should have been wound up before April 10, 2011."It was in 2009 that BBMP thought of implementing a new automated garbage plant, similar to the one in…

Traffic police at the prepaid auto center on Residency Road charge Rs. 1 from passengers in the name of "maintenance", although the center is maintained by a private firm free of cost. Some of the prepaid auto centers in the city are now managed by IIHT, a private firm that provides computers, printing machines and printed tickets for the centers.They also repair any hardware or software damage to the computers or printers free of cost and have their institute's name painted on the counter and on the back of the tickets as advertisements.However, the Bangalore City Traffic Police places their…

850 students from various schools in the state, participated in the state level Abacus competition held on Sunday, 8, January, 2012. Aloha, an organisation that runs advanced abacus and mental arithmetic programme, conducted the competition at Shri Krishna Kalyana Mantapa, Rajaji Nagar. Vaibhav Prakash, attempting the questions in the state level competition. Pic: Deepti Sarma Arithmetic through abacus is a Chinese tool that helps develop the part of brain which controls creativity and integration of information.Each student sported an Aloha Tshirt and was armed with the beaded abacus to solve 60 complex arithmetic Qs in 5 mins! Sounds unattainable? It…

In a startling land grab case filed by BTM Layout's Bank Officers' Co- Operative Housing Society against the BDA for illegal land transfer, the Karnataka High Court has ordered the BDA on January 6th to restore the land and maintain it as a park. View of the disputed land from across the street. Pic:Deepthi M S The bank officers cooperative was allotted 30 acres of land in bulk in 1982, at the time of the formation of BTM layout. The land was given to the society on a lease agreement. Most of the land was used for construction except for…