City: Bengaluru

Residents of MICO Layout have not been able to use the playground for over a decade now because the seized vehicles have been dumped there by the Police. seized vehicles in BTM IInd stage The Mico layout police station was previously located near the Self Financed Housing Scheme (SFHS) colony in BTM Layout 2nd stage. Due to lack of space within the police station compound, they dumped the seizedvehicles in the neighbouring playground. Though the police station has been moved to 16th Main a few months ago, the vehicles continue to languish at the playground. As per rules, these vehicles…

Sunrise at Bilekal Rangaswamy Betta. Pic: Deepa Mohan. When four friends from varying backgrounds share a love for the outdoors, and decide to do something about it, a good initiative is born. The four friends are Anand Sankar, Lionel Prem Lobo, Srinidhi Raghavendra and Sandeep Komarla, and together, they've created Basic Halli, a tented eco-resort a little beyond Kanakapura, about 70 km. from Bangalore. Anand had organized a bird survey in the area, so I had gone with a group of  fellow naturalists,  to  document the bird (and butterfly) species in the vicinity. "Our location is a great plus," smiles…

Children listen attentively as Aparna shows pictures of characters from popular culture For adults like me, unused to interacting with small children on a regular basis, walking into a primary school classroom is like stepping into another world. A chorus of goodmorningma'am, keen faces, eagerness to listen...in short, enthusiasm unbound. For people like Aparna D and Rajeshwari S however, these reactions are familiar territory. Aparna and Rajeshwari are not teachers in the formal sense. But they are educators. People with a sense of mission, who understand how important it is to get children to think about what they eat. As…

Bangalore Book festival, in its eighth edition, the second largest in the country, after Kolkata, kicked off last weekend at Palace Grounds. The festival is on till November 21st. As usual there are stalls of major book stores and publishers like Sapna, Navneet, and Higginbothams.  British library, Britannica encyclopedia, and Times Group too have their stalls. Engineering, medical, photography, architecture or interior designing, there is something for everyone. Bangalore Book Fair 2010. Pic: Usha Hariprasad. There are a few unusual stalls - take a look at some of these offbeat attractions. For lovers of history and philosophy The Center for…

So BESCOM wants us to pay 75 paise extra per unit of electricity consumed, as per its proposal. Some citizens are opposing this and registering their dissatisfaction, but the  majority of us apparently  can't be bothered or don't care, or  are not even aware of the proposal - the last, however, is no excuse because  the proposed hike has been in the news and the BESCOM authorities have also issued notices inviting reactions (and objections if any) from citizens. Three months ago, the Consumer Care Society of Banashankari bemoaned the fact that the initial announcement inviting citizens' comments, brought in…

It's been a busy week at the movies in Bangalore. Even as the much awaited The Social Network opened in theatres, the Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy's International film festival opened at three different venues in the city, screening 85 films between November 8 and14, 2010. Besides its presence in the city, the festival also expected to move to Bidar, Dharwad, Mangalore and Shimoga.  Citizen Matters caught up with some of the festival's weekend fare. The Social Network (USA) This film on the making of Facebook runs with the tagline "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies".…

Taking possession of an apartment is so often fraught with its own challenges (late handover, defects within the apartment) for the individual apartment owner, that more often than not building-level issues tend to be ignored.  Further, during the Builder-provided warranty period, occupancy normally tends to be very low, making very few people available for handling building-level issues.  Caveat Emptor: Latin for 'Let the Buyer Beware'. While first-time associations do cover obvious issues (like major defects / incompletion in building construction, basic documentation, handover of maintenance corpus), many other issues are ignored, either due to a lack of awareness or resources…

Record and file everything.  It is essential that the MC (Management committee) formally document and file everything pertaining to the handover.  Many problems, which have their roots in ineffective handovers, crop up only after several years.  During the intervening period, people change - both in the MC / Association as well as the Builder.  Further, vendors' memories are notoriously short when it comes to delivering on promises made.  All important documents should be copied and filed properly - in a logical manner, which allows easy retrieval at a subsequent date.  Originals and copies should be stored separately - e.g. the…

On Monday midnight, 120 residents of Sachidananda Nagar got their khatas from the BBMP zonal office at Rajarajeshwari Nagar. “This is a great victory for us. It was ‘freedom at midnight’,” gushes Nethrakere Uday Shankar, 54, one of the leaders of the protest. Shankar is Chief Sub-Editor at a Kannada daily in the city. "I bought a plot in the layout in 1992, and planned to build a house there in 2001. I have been waiting for khata since 2001," he said. It was around 1.40 am when khatas were given away to all. This rare act by the BBMP…

A crow, caught in the maanja. Pic: Saandip N G. I witnessed murder of my avian friends in Lalbagh, near the Glass House on Sunday morning. The culprit? A manja daara is a thread used for flying kites. This is very strong and is smeared with fine powered glass to increase its strength. Everyone present witnessed the birds being killed. Even the horticulture department workers inside Lalbagh ignored it and shook their heads as if it not of any concern to them. This is the second time I am noticing, unattended kite threads passing through many trees in Lalbagh. The…