City: Mumbai

Unlike other cities in the country, Mumbai has a complex structure of electricity distribution. To begin with, there are multiple electricity distributors. There is the state owned Bruhanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) and a Public Sector Undertaking, Mahavitaran (MSEDCL). The two major private players are Tata Power and Adani Electricity. In the Western suburbs of the city, customers can choose between the private distributors. So if you are living in an apartment complex, it’s quite possible that you and your next door neighbour receive power from different companies. When customers received their bills in June, they were in for…

Ayesha is a 7th standard student at a Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) school at Chembur Naka. While earlier, she used to dress up and rush to school, these days, she begins her day with unread WhatsApp messages. Typically, the messages contain educational video links, homework assignments, and activities sent by her teachers in subject-wise WhatsApp groups. Ayesha watches the videos to understand a concept, completes assignments in her notebook, and uploads pictures on the appropriate WhatsApp group. The messaging app, previously used by her mother to stay in touch with friends and family, is a substitute for Ayesha's…

We are a regular Mumbaikar working-couple and spend a big part of our everyday life between work and commute. The rising levels of pollution we were experiencing in a mega-city like Mumbai always bothered us. Urban pollution, as well as the threat to contamination of natural resources, is a global problem, and in a developing country like ours, the municipal land-fills stand out on this front. We knew about the Deonar dumping ground fire in 2017 and the accompanying air pollution. This could have been avoided if, as a city, we knew how to better manage the volume of waste…

When the lockdown was initially announced on March 24th, many in the art fraternity failed to grasp its impact. Innovative installation artist Hetal Shukla was in fact still considering his trip to Dubai and scheduling his sponsored exhibition on 150 years of Mahatma Gandhi in Germany. As the lockdown kept on getting extended, the 150 artworks on Gandhi stayed put at Mani Bhavan, air travel got restricted and today he is wondering how he will pay his six-odd staff, who have been with him for over two decades. "I managed to pay their April salaries but slashed it thereafter since I am struggling myself,"…

“Ab to dus rupaye wala customer bhi chalega, kam se kam chai aur pav to khane ko milenge is lockdown mein (Now, even a customer who can pay ten rupees will do. It can get me some chai and bread at least during this lockdown),” says Beauty Biswas, a sex worker at Kamathipura, Mumbai’s notorious red light district, located virtually at the centre of the city.  The coronavirus pandemic has severely affected the sustenance of these women in Kamathipura. The area is home to about 4500 -5000 sex workers, who have been rendered jobless and penniless since the lockdown was clamped.…

On July 8th, the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai’s figures showed 87,513 COVID positive patients in the city.  59,238 people have shown symptoms and are awaiting test results. Mumbai continues to be the worst-affected in Maharashtra and newer hotspots in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region such as Navi Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli are mushrooming. The government is struggling to ramp up health infrastructure even as complaints of lack of ambulances, beds, and other health facilities mount. Here’s a step-by-step guide on what to do if you are tested positive for COVID-19 in Mumbai:  When to worry: The onset of symptoms is usually between 2…

When Mumbai’s lifeline, the suburban train services were abruptly halted on March 24th, as the country went into a lockdown that would stretch for weeks, the city’s public bus service, BEST, rose to the occassion to single-handedly keep the city running. At the height of the COVID lockdown, BEST buses were the only transport available in the city, transporting essential services workers to their work places and back. BEST ran special services to ferry COVID warriors to hospitals, banks and other essential locations. With most of Mumbai’s municipal, health and other essential service workers living in distant suburbs, and some…

The clampdown on all non-essential activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant decline in air pollution levels in major cities across India. Researchers from Respirer Living Sciences and Carbon Copy have analysed average air quality during all four lockdown phases in India as well as concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), and Benzene during individual phases for Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, as part of their on-going National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) Tracker project to monitor the implementation of the NCAP. Four cities witness clean air From March 25 to…

It is that time of the year again. When it rains, rather pours, in Mumbai ( the Mumbai region has the second highest rainfall in the country after Cheerapunji). And then the blame game begins to divert attention from the flooding of the city, loss of lives and livelihoods, and health issues.  Brihanmumai Municipal Commissioner (BMC) Iqbal Singh Chahal claims that the city is all set to meet the rains with its over 2900-km long storm water drain network -- all desilted and cleaned up, despite the COVID crisis and large-scale labour migration. Chahal announced that BMC has already surpassed…

It is that time of the year again. When it rains, rather pours, in Mumbai ( the Mumbai region has the second highest rainfall in the country after Cheerapunji). And then the blame game begins to divert attention from the flooding of the city, loss of lives and livelihoods, and health issues.  Brihanmumai Municipal Commissioner (BMC) Iqbal Singh Chahal claims that the city is all set to meet the rains with its over 2900-km long storm water drain network -- all desilted and cleaned up, despite the COVID crisis and large-scale labour migration. Chahal announced that BMC has already surpassed…