City: Delhi / NCR

Long before television, it was the radio that caught your ear and put it to the ground of the world. Never mind if it was a word, a note or even just a sound byte that floated into your mind. It chimed around in your head and drove home special, or even just informal, messages.   The celebration of the legacy and experience of that special wonder gadget, then, resonated with the diverse audiences at The Radio Festival (TRF), hosted by the International Association of Women in Radio and Television, partnering with UNESCO on February 15th, 2018, at New Delhi.…

Last month, government bus drivers in Tamil Nadu struck work for over a week, throwing the cities’ commute scenario into chaos. The issue: long-standing demands over a wage hike. The bus drivers in the state have been demanding pay scales in compliance with the 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC) recommendations, approved by the central government in June 2016. Currently, in Chennai Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC), the basic salary of permanent drivers starts from Rs 17,700. This is according to a settlement that the MTC reached with some trade unions on January 4th. However, major trade unions including the DMK-backed Labour…

The spate of horrific news from schools across the country does not seem to subside. The most recent incident, of course, is the mysterious death of a Class 9 student in the school toilet in northeast Delhi's Karawal Nagar. It is suspected that the teen died of internal injuries resulting from assault by a group of friends. Earlier this year in Lucknow, Hrithik Sharma, a Class 1 student, was stabbed on the back, chest and left eye by a girl in Class 7, in anticipation of a holiday that the school would inevitably declare in the wake of such a…

“Urbanisation is our opportunity and priority,” said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his speech in Parliament, as he presented the Union Budget 2018, presumably the current government’s last big one before the nation goes for elections in 2019. Cities, per se, however did not see too much exclusive focus except in a few allusions to big-ticket schemes introduced by the current dispensation and a couple of city-specific allocations. Here is a quick round-up of what Budget 2018 had to say about the plans for India's urban future: Air pollution in Delhi and NCR Concern for the alarming levels of pollution…

The alarming air quality in the National Capital region (NCR), comprised of Delhi and adjoining areas, has found fresh mention in the Economic Survey 2017-18 tabled in Parliament on January 29th. It is well known by now that the average annual levels of PM2.5 – one of the most critical contaminants in the air we breathe – remain at above three times the prescribed level in this region. The Survey reiterates the four main reasons for Delhi’s worsening air quality – crop residue and biomass burning; vehicular emissions and re-destributed road dust; construction, industries, and power plants; winter temperature inversion,…

Media focus on the fire that broke out and killed four in Mumbai’s residential Mamoon Manzil complex has been less compared to that on the fire tragedy in the same city in the end of December. The cause of the fire in this building is yet to be ascertained but no one would be surprised if it was pinned down to faulty management and violation of rules. Barely a week ago, the Kamala Mills tragedy got the Bruhan Mumbai Corporation (BMC) on its toes, throwing them into panic-stricken knee-jerk reaction: suspending five officials, galvanising authorities, managers, health and medical experts…

If you were to ask any commuter in any Indian city about their daily pet peeve, it would be the time spent in traffic. And now, Ola, the new age mobility platform serving 110 cities with 8 lakh vehicles on the roads has presented a year-end glimpse of 'how India commuted' based on their records. Some highlights from the top seven cities - Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata, and Chennai: Total average traffic speed dropped by a whopping 2.9km/hr with Bangalore registering the slowest at 17.2km/hour Ola Share has saved 4 times the fuel from last year, telling of the high customer adoption…

Once again it’s that time of the year when we are most prone to looking back and ahead at the same time. Taking stock of the year’s discourse on urbanisation in India, it is evident that some issues have consistently dominated the narrative and been on top of the minds of urban citizens in 2017. These are also issues that we need to sustain focus upon as we move into the new year, since they will continue to play an important role in determining the dynamics and direction of development in the country, and in particular in its cities. As…

It has been a year of discontent in the medical sector with patients losing patience, doctors threatening to go on strike and governments resorting to thrust-and-parry. At different points in time throughout the year, governments in different parts of the country were seen to lock horns with the medical system, beginning with Kolkata in June, going on to Bengaluru in November and most recently in Delhi this month. Delhi The latest flashpoint emerged in the capital city, the trigger being an incident at the Max Hospital at Shalimar Bagh, where a couple of doctors falsely declared the death of a…

It has been just over a week since Mumbai was lashed by the highest 24-hour December rain in a decade due to cyclone Ockhi. Temperatures dropped sharply, schools were shut, and companies issued advisories to employees. But when such a disaster strikes the city, the most vulnerable are invariably its homeless. Brijesh Arya, an activist working with the homeless in Mumbai, mentions many cases from Mumbai’s monsoon floods this year. One is the case of Anju Kharwa, who held her child on her shoulders for as long as the floods raged. The flood that lasted nearly two days had caused…