City: Bengaluru

In a desperate bid to provide a playground for more than 700 children living in L&T South City, residents of the apartment complex in Mico-Arakere Layout on 19th March hired a bulldozer to level a part of the 5.5 acre land that was meant to be developed as a playground. The layout is located off Bannerghatta Road roughly opposite IIM-Bengaluru.  No cricket match, this one. Hulimavu Police had a brush with residents of L&T South City on Mar 19. Pic: SUGRUHA. The event witnessed high drama as Hulimavu police, BDA officials and officials from even the BBMP were at the…

Residents of Dollars Colony in J P Nagar 4th phase are complaining of increasing traffic jams at the 8th main road-2nd cross intersection. The cause they say is the M K Ahmed super market located at the intersection. Sign at the entrance (8th Main Road) of the basement restricting parking to two-wheelers. Pic: Yogaraj Mudalgi. K V R Somayaji, at IT consultant in his fifties, who lives opposite the store on 2nd cross says that the store is not allowing car parking in the basement, leading to customers parking on busy 8th Main. A city no-parking sign prohibits parking of…

Peace, solitude, glimpses of mythological past and a touch of divinity are what you get when you head for a trip to Mulbagilu. We set out from Bangalore by eight in the morning on Bangalore-Hoskote route. It was just me, my 5 year old and my husband. We reached Kurudamale by 10 am and covered both Maha Ganapathi and Someshwara temple. Chat with the Someshwara temple priest for some time if you can and he will gladly furnish you with details of the temple architecture and its history. Mulbagilu - View from Lav-Kusha hill. Pic: Usha Hariprasad. Our next stop…

From 26th March onwards, thousands of citizens in Karnataka and lakhs all over India under the banner of ‘India Against Corruption (IAC)' will hold a series of campaigns that will converge into a final ultimatum to the Central govt. on April 5th in the form of a fast unto death by revered social activist Shri Anna Hazare. In Bengaluru, on 26th March, citizens will come together to launch Dandi March II, a non-violent protest against lack of willingness of Central Govt. to ACT against CORRUPTION. Acknowledging Loksatta party's strong support to this patriotic movement, Karnataka Loksatta party President, N S…

The second Sunday bird watch at Lalbagh with BNG birders was a new experience. Of course every visit has something new. New topics, information, friends, lot more...It was very interesting to see little children so actively involved, interested in knowing and understanding about birds. How do we observe birds, animals behaviors, their calls, types of nests and which trees, flower they visit etc. How often do the birds visit here or how many reside permanently. There is no end if we go deep in observation. We saw them and keep on clicking our camera. And the Lalbagh small lake never…

With the ban of thin plastic bags coming into force from 15th March 2011, Puttenahalli Neighbourhood Lake Improvement Trust (PNLIT) cloth shopping bags are in the market. It is said that one reusable bag eliminates an average of a 1000 plastic bags. Anand, one of the owners of Fresh Greens, with the bags. Pic: Arathi Manay Yajaman. When the ban was first announced a few weeks ago, some of the shops on Puttenahalli Road had approached PNLIT members for the supply of cloth bags that can be sold in their shops. About the same time last year, some of us who were concerned…

Garbage contractor S Ramachandra Reddy is in charge of Bellandur ward (150) since December 2009. Bellandur is in the south-eastern outskirts of Bengaluru, and falls under BBMP's Mahadevapura Zone. Reddy's track record has been extremely poor and yet he stays on, and even talks of the new contract coming up this year. Contract workers shifting garbage from autos to tipper lorry at Haralur road, near Kaikondanahalli lake. Pic Navya P K. Mamatha, Environment Engineer, BBMP (Mahadevpura zone) says that there have been many complaints about this contractor. "When public complain to us about specific instances, we attend to those promptly.…

At our apartment complex, 'Mana Sarovar' in Doddanekkundi, we have installed water meters for all individual 32 flats and provided monthly maintenance as per individual water usage.  All the meters have been installed on the terrace. ManaSarovar__Apartment_Water_Meters Earlier we used to buy 3-4 tankers per day with limited supply of water. Water was available for 1.5 hours in the morning, one hour in the afternoon and 1.5 hours at night for almost a year.  But now we have 24 hour water supply but buy only 2 tankers per day. I did some analysis of water usage in my apartment complex. One can see…

A woman in a ghetto in Cambodia who will not let her house be pulled down. Elsewhere, in Rio Janeiro, a mother mourns the death of a son killed amidst the rivalry between favelas. In India, another woman wows that her son will only marry a rape victim. In Kibera (Kenya), the largest slum in Africa, a mother still dares to dream of a better world for her children. These are some of the protagonists of director JR's Women are Heroes, joined only by their gender and their undefeatable propensity to hope. Pic courtesy: JR's official website. The picture represents…

Bengalureans have come to expect that at every corner they turn, they will be met with a wide heap of garbage.  They have also come to accept that Pourakarmikas themselves will dump their melange of garbage on the ground. What Bengalureans are not aware of is that this manner of collecting unsegregated garbage and transferring it manually, with the garbage exposed to the environment, is in total violation of the Ministry of Environment & Forests' Municipal Solid Waste Handling Rules of 2000.  What Bengalureans also do not know is that behind this ‘gawd-awful' system of collecting garbage lurks one more…