City: Pune

A group of ecologists, on what appears to be a boat, are holding an olive ridley turtle. The turtle is seen gasping for air and is trying to breathe through its mouth. A closer look reveals that the turtle’s left nostril is blocked. An ecologist tries to pull out the blockage with a pair of pliers. The turtle, writhing in pain, soon starts bleeding. The next seven minutes are harrowing, but finally ecologists succeed. While the turtle is free, ecologists, much to their dismay, learn that the stuff blocking the turtle’s nose was a plastic straw! This eight-minute-long YouTube video…

Come June 5 and all eyes across the world will be on India, the global host of World Environment Day, 2018. A country with a recycling economy predominantly driven by informal waste-pickers, India has imposed a complete ban on plastic in several states so far, setting the stage for this year’s theme, “Beat Plastic Pollution”. In March 2016, the erstwhile Plastic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2011 were replaced by the Plastic Waste Management Rules 2016, notified by the Ministry of Environment and Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC). This provides a regulatory framework for management of plastic waste by urban…

Arshel Akhter, the newly-elected Bicycle Mayor of Guwahati, discovered his love for cycling as he explored his city on two wheels. Along with a healthy lifestyle, the software developer-turned-banker-turned-stocks investor found that with cycling came a supportive and active community of enthusiasts from across all professions and ages. Now his mission is to expand this community to include not just hobbyists but people across all walks of life as he works to invigorate cycling in his city. Arshel envisages a future where the coming generation will readily take to cycling without any apprehensions that prevail currently. “We need more cycling…

It was in 1997 that Bangalore city corporation issued the first municipal bond in India, backed by a state government guarantee. The next year, Ahmedabad issued bonds worth Rs 100 crore, without government guarantee. But the momentum didn’t pick up - bonds worth only about Rs 1500 cr have been issued overall since then, and there have been no issues in the more recent years. Last June, however, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) became the first city to issue bonds after a long gap. Bonds worth Rs 200 cr were issue to fund PMC’s 24X7 water supply project. Then again, in…

The growth in the nation’s cities has been maddeningly slow. And it has not even been much, according to the fifth edition of Janaagraha’s Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) 2017. There has been some improvement in the quality of governance in 23 cities. Yet, this has come about at a frustrating snail’s pace. Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (Janaagraha), a Bengaluru-based non-profit, has surveyed the quality of governance in 23 major cities in 20 states. The survey was based on 89 questions. Pune was the Number 1 grosser, scoring between 3.0 and 5.1 on 10 and topping the…

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…

On December 3rd 2017, Pimple Saudagar, an upmarket suburb under the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (sister city of Pune) hosted a meeting of citizens, apartment associations, shop owners and not-for-profit organisations to commit themselves to a movement that could alter the ecological footprint of the entire area. Come January 1st and Pimple Saudagar has resolved to go plastic bag free, entirely! Today everyone is aware of the impact of plastic pollution; there have been enough campaigns, disincentives for usage (such as imposing additional charges for plastic carry bags), incentives for avoidance (such as distribution of free bags by NGOs ) and…

It’s been close to two years since the first 20 cities were selected under the much talked-about Smart Cities Mission (SCM) of the Government of India, but progress under the mission has been slow. Let us just look at the top five cities. Selected in January 2016, these cities - Bhubaneswar, Pune, Jaipur, Surat and Kochi - are supposed to complete the proposed projects under the SCM by 2021-22. But most of these cities appear to be lagging behind schedule, both in terms of the number of projects completed as well as the works under progress. Surat leads, with works…

Traffic congestion, waste management, economic inequality -- issues such as these have been bogging down Indian cities. But attempting piecemeal, inefficient solutions means that problems have only worsened. The ‘Smart Cities Mission’ (SCM) launched by Narendra Modi's government in 2015 aimed at tackling urban issues. The concept was to make cities smart - to do more with less, to use existing resources efficiently and to build on them. As per the SCM, cities should provide citizens essential infrastructure, decent quality of life, sustainable environment, and also apply smart solutions. Given the lofty objective, it is interesting to observe how the…

Pune has a story similar to many other cities in India that grew exponentially without much warning. The unplanned development hit the water resources badly, increasing the city’s dependence on groundwater. Now, the city experiences water scarcity every year, even when the monsoons have been plentiful. Although the authorities have assured the citizens of adequate water storage in the dams and fewer water cuts this year, long-term, sustainable solutions still evade all political discourses. The good news, however, is that the citizens and the housing societies have now started coming forward to work around the problem and advocate changes at…