City: Mumbai

Few civic issues bring citizens together like Solid Waste Management (SWM). An important component of neighbourhood cleanliness and sanitation, SWM has formed the core of citizen-government partnership in Mumbai.  Repeated governments have tried to stir up citizen participation through SWM. In 1997, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) formalised the creation of citizen groups called Advanced Locality Management (ALM) in an attempt to involve citizens in neighbourhood cleanliness.  Most recently, Swachh Survekshan, part of the Swachh Bharat Mission, ranks cities across the country in categories of cleanliness and sanitation on four parameters, one of which is citizen feedback. The SBM guidelines…

“The lockdown around me is making me feel lonely, and I don’t understand how to make myself feel better. I also want to help my parents in some way, but I don’t know how to do so…” Today, we find ourselves in a world which is more overwhelming, challenging and restricted than before. With the COVID-19 pandemic, physical health is on everyone’s mind, and mental health has become an inevitable casualty. Children from low-income communities of India are facing adversities that have long-term psychological, emotional and physical effects; situations have worsened causing economic and financial ramifications, leading to issues such…

More than 2,500 people die and over 3,000 are injured annually in Mumbai's suburban network, considered the lifeline of India's commercial capital. Quoting figures from the Railway Police, the Economic Survey of Maharashtra 2019-20, reveals that in 2017, there were 3,014 deaths and 3,345 injuries, while in 2018, this number was 2,981 and 3,349, respectively. On a particularly deadly day, 18 July 2019, 18 people died - the maximum in a single day. These include 12 on Central Railway and 6 on Western Railways. The latest conundrum surrounding the location of the Metro 3 car depot needs to be viewed in this context. In this political tug of war, no matter…

It is magic at the DPS Lake these days. Located near Palm Beach Road behind Delhi Public School, Nerul in Navi Mumbai, the lake is home to many different species of birds. At this time of the year, the flamingos stand out and they are there in thousands! Flamingo City. (Pic: Malcolm Stephens) (Pic: Malcolm Stephens) Greater and Lesser flamingos fly in to Mumbai every winter from Kutch, Gujarat and Sambar Lake, Rajasthan. They are also known to come from other countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. The winters are harsh there, and apart from the warmth, the shallow…

About five years ago, Manoj Gopalkrishnan, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, heard about the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus or MERS-COV outbreak. He read news stories discussing the shortage of testing kits and wondered if pooling as a form of testing, where samples are mixed together in a batch and only tested further if the combined sample tests positive, could be used to accelerate testing. But back then, the idea only remained in his head. In early 2020 as COVID-19 virus raged across the world, Manoj saw that once again there was a shortage of…

At Mumbai Votes, we spent the last year tracking and assessing the performance of MPs against the promises they made before election and during the first year (2019-20), of their five year term.  All of the six MPs made promises to expedite long pending redevelopment & rehabilitation of slums and old buildings. In a city with more than half its population living in slums, and several collapses of old buildings, it is reasonable to expect elected representatives to prioritise the issue of safe, affordable and dignified housing for all.  In this piece, I will assess their efforts to fulfil their…

In a few of the English movies I have seen, I recall seeing London Black Cabs, in which a firm partition isolates the driver from the passengers, with a small window for communication. Even in the days of Sherlock Holmes and horse-drawn Hansom Cabs, we see that the passengers are separated from the driver - some sort of social distancing. So, the idea of social distancing in small public transport vehicles is not really new. A Hansom Cab with driver on the sets of a Sherlock Holmes film (Photo: By Andrew Dunn - English Wikipedia) In June, when the city…

As talks of vaccines acquire a shrill pitch, it is time to look back at some of the essential workers who saw us through the hard days of the lockdown in the past few months. The mortuary and ambulance staff of King Edward Memorial (KEM) hospital, one of Mumbai's biggest public hospitals, spoke to Citizen Matters about their life experiences in 2020 - an extraordinary year which was filled with fear and trepidation. But, they could not stop. The 'leader' Senior Mortuary Attendant, Kashinath Raghunath Mugdar, is an old hand. Having witnessed the mortuary overflow after the 1993 communal riots,…

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is spending about Rs 1600 crores over a period of about three years to desalinate water from the Arabian Sea to make it drink-worthy or potable. In November 2020, Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray announced that Mumbai's first desalination plant should take care of the water shortage that the city invariably faces in the summer months of April- May, by accounting for about 10-15 % of its annual water needs. Similar proposals were planned back in 2005 but were rejected as they were considered too costly. This time around, the proposal has officially been approved despite being…

Many of us may have heard this short story about a little boy on the beach. Once upon a time there was an old man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. Early one morning, he saw a small boy on the sea-shore.  A big storm the previous night had littered the vast beach with thousands of starfish. The little boy bent down every so often to pick up an object and throw it into the sea. “May I ask what is it that you are doing” he asked the boy.“Throwing starfish into the ocean” the…