City: Bengaluru

Jayanagar General Hospital is soon to undergo a makeover in a bid to provide better care, better facilities and to have more people use its services. The 300-bed hospital, one of the biggest in the city, is currently underused. On an average, only 60-75 per cent of the beds in the wards are occupied and there are only 600-700 patients who visit the OPD (Out Patient Department) daily. A development plan, spearheaded by a team consisting of Jayanagar MLA B N Vijaya Kumar, Principal Secretary (Health) Ramana Reddy, Health Commissioner D N Nayak, Associate Professor at IIM-B (Indian Institute of…

We take the BTM Layout-Silk Board route everyday. In the evenings at around 6.30 pm on BTM Layout, you can find huge private buses that ply between cities parked on to the left side of the road occupying one lane completely. This causes a traffic jam and slows the traffic considerably. BTM Layout already has its own traffic woes because it has Electronics City commuters as well Whitefield commuters taking the road.Similarly JP nagar as well as BTM Layout has quite a number of individual houses. These residents do not have parking speces in their own houses and simply park their…

From Jayanagar in south Bengaluru to Sanjaynagar in the north, workers are now busy removing footpath slabs and dredging up mud and muck from roadside drains – which is good, except that  the mounds of muck are then left  along the edges of the drains, only to be washed right back into the ditch as soon as it rains.Tens of thousands of citizens watch this tamasha, but feel helpless about pulling up those responsible for such mindless waste of tax payers’ money. The BBMP declares that it is the local subcontractor who has to be contacted, the local subcontractor is…

He has been in the hot seat of the Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic and Security) for nearly two-and-half years. IPS officer Praveen Sood has much to say about the city's motorists. Focusing primarily on maintaining discipline on the road, the traffic police department under his leadership has gone all out on nabbing offenders. With the help of technology and a non-compromising stand in enforcing the law, the department attempts to compensate for its severe staff shortage. Praveen Sood in conversation with Citizen Matters about the technology used to monitor traffic, while demonstrating traffic flow in a major intersection in…

Nearly two weeks ago, a major chokepoint in city's north-eastern fringes was eliminated when citizens starting driving over the Whitefield-Kadugodi railway overbridge. The bridge connects the Kadugodi-Seegehalli-Kannamangala area north of the Whitefield Railway Station with the rest of Bengaluru city. After wait of nearly four years and a particularly excruciating two years, the clean, well-done road with bridge bounding walls nicely painted seems like a heaven-slapped fast lane for weary motorists here. It now takes only a minute to cross over what has been a 20-40 minutes detour, leading to an extra hour of road-time every day for most people…

"I don't want my daughter to make the same mistakes I made", says 35-year-old Selvi P, a domestic worker who married at the early age of 19 to Pazhani, who then used to work at a petrol bunk. Against her family's wishes, Selvi married the man she was determined to spend the rest of her life with. On a recent trip to Mysore, Selvi saw the campus of IT major Infosys. Since then it is her dream that her daughter Savita works there. Pic: Vaishnavi Vittal But her happiness was short-lived as her husband soon took to alcohol and beat…

"From Central Talkies to Malleshwaram 18th Cross, would be a great walk and sunlight would not fall on the ground. That is my memory of Sampige road."Sampige Road - the wonderfully fragrant name holds a lot of memories for many Bangaloreans who grew up in and around Malleswaram. The huge Malleswaram Circle, the horses in the jataka stand, the fragrance of the bouquet shop, shoppers at 8th Cross and the temples - all this give Sampige Road a typical south Indian look and feel.Listen to Vimala Rangachar, grand daughter of Venkataranga Iyengar, the founder of Malleswaram, and other old time…

Twenty-two year old Gayathri S says she has done it all. From marketing to promotions to driving an auto rickshaw and even a stint as a model, she has taken up all kinds of odd jobs to support herself and her family of three. It shows on her frail, skinny frame. Gayathri completed her four-year Bachelor's degree in information sciences engineering course just last month. A resident of Vyalikaval in north Bengaluru, she lives with her mother, her school-dropout brother Purushotham G and younger sister Usha G, an eighth standard student. Gayathri's father Srinivas passed away when her mother was…

“The best way to promote sports is through communities. If we can support the needy through such initiatives, even better,” says 16-year-old Shaurya Saluja, organizer of a five-day squash camp in the city. A 12th standard student at Indus International School, Saluja believes that such camps will make the otherwise less-known sport popular. Shaurya Saluja. Pic courtesy: Shaurya Saluja. The camp will be held at Shobha Lakeview Club at Sarjapur Outer Ring Road on July 23, 24, 25, 30 and 31. Satinder Bajwa, Harvard University Head Squash Coach and mentor of eight-time world squash champion Jansher Khan, is holding the…

One day, during my morning walk, I came across a very cute little girl of about seven or eight standing in front of a half constructed building. She had another little boy with her, who was ‘perhaps her brother' I guessed. He was about five or six. My heart went out to them when I saw them picking up twigs from the footpaths nearby. I went close to the girl and asked her whether she was going to school. She said ‘No, I need to look after my younger siblings'' I asked her if she had ever attended school as…