City: Bengaluru

India’s urban population went up from 17.9% in 1960 to 34.9% in 2020. Bengaluru’s population in the same time period increased more than 10 times. The city’s urbanisation has led to Bengaluru's Land Surface Temperature (LST) increasing from 33.08℃ in 1992 to 41℃ in 2017 -- a whopping 24% increase! Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur have analysed Bengaluru’s urban expansion and how it affected surface temperatures. The study titled Analyzing and Predicting Urban Expansion and Its Effects on Surface Temperature for Two Indian Megacities: Bengaluru and Chennai also predicts the city’s urban area in 2025. Key findings…

Driving to my neighbourhood in the periphery of Bengaluru is like maneuvering a lunar module on the moonscape. Walking or biking is almost impossible. Every year, the gram panchayat ‘repairs’ the roads, thanks to years of advocacy from residents. And every monsoon, the road washes away. To my solution-oriented mind, the answer is really simple: study the problem - the history of the road and area; socio-cultural conditions of the neighbourhood, villages, and industries on the road; the number of cars/ buses/ people using the road; environment and climate-related aspects such as soil, drainage patterns, etc. Then, it is about…

Bengaluru children test COVID positive The first 10 days of August saw 499 children in Bengaluru testing positive for COVID. A health bulletin reported that 88 children between 0 to 9 years and 305 children between 10 to 19 years tested positive. The number might shoot up to more than three times in the next few weeks, said sources in the health department. They have also advised parents to vaccinate themselves and to keep children away from crowded places. However, BBMP officials denied there was a steep rise in fresh cases among children. They said most children who tested positive…

Last October, around 700 houses in Bengaluru were damaged after heavy rains and flooding. The saga continues this year - 70 houses were flooded on June 4, and more on July 5. For hundreds of low-income families in Bengaluru, heavy rainfall in the last few years have meant intense damage or even losing their home. Flooding can also lead to the inflow of sewage into slums, which further increases the risk of water-borne and vector-borne diseases. Flooded roads and underpasses don't just choke traffic for hours, but they also increase the likelihood of accidents. Flooding has also been leading to…

The cash strapped Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been on a quest to improve its system, which will enable it to widen its property tax net. BBMP was one of the first municipal corporations in the country to embrace technology and implement an online Self Assessment Tax system. Whilst the effort has been in the right direction, it is however, constantly in the news, quite often for the wrong reasons. Now, even as it manages the brickbats and high praise, especially for its COVID management, BBMP has thrown a shocker to the public - a Property Tax Demand Notice…

Last year, BESCOM, Bengaluru’s electricity supply company, had called for applications from consumers to set up rooftop solar panels. BESCOM also launched a first-in-the-country project called CREST, a tool that enables consumers to evaluate their rooftop’s potential for solar energy production.  These ambitious initiatives saw BESCOM receiving around 1200 applications for rooftop solar installations since March 2020, according to a trusted department source. But 250 consumers later withdrew their applications, according to S S Raghunandan, President, Karnataka Renewable Energy Association (KREA).  Let’s crunch some numbers. Bengaluru has an actual realisable potential of 2.8 GW of solar energy. But the city that…

Prohibitory orders till August 16th Bengaluru City police has imposed prohibitory orders, based on guidelines from the Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority. The order, issued to contain the spread of COVID, prohibits the assembly of more than four people in public places. Bus stands, Metro stations, railway stations and airports are exempted. The curfew will be in place till 6 am on August 16. Bengaluru Police has invoked Section 144 (1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). Those violating the orders will be punished under the Disaster Management Act and Karnataka Epidemic Diseases Act. On Thursday, 414 COVID-positive cases…

COVID infections are on the upswing, with the World Health Organization announcing an 80 percent average increase in infections over the past four weeks in five of the health agency’s six regions, a jump largely fuelled by the Delta variant. “Delta is a warning that the virus is evolving but it is also a call to action that we need to move now before more dangerous variants emerge,” said Michael Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme, in a briefing. Statistical models seem to suggest that the third wave in India could be three to four times more severe than…

Popular imagination would have it that campaigns begin and go on until their objective is achieved or rejected; and then they wind up. Not quite, says Tara Krishnaswamy, a veteran of several civic campaings in Bengaluru. Campaigns are seldom linear and their chronology is almost always chequered. Tara was among many citizen activists who had pushed for the bus priority lane (BPL) along the Outer Ring Road (ORR). That was back in 2017. The world over, giving priority to public bus movement -- through dedicated bus lanes or more complex systems like BRTS (Bus Rapid Transit Systems) -- is acknowledged…

I opened one of the newspapers today and saw a brief report that stated that a certain infrastructure project in Bengaluru that had been stalled for the last year, had been restarted. The narrative in the paper was that the contractor on the project had problems; the government put the project on hold and later, got the same contractor to resume work on it. In the meantime, a year and a half had passed. Pedestrians had fallen into potholes on the roads that were dug up for the project. Monsoon rains had clogged the works and traffic was getting jammed.…