bangalore problems

It is not possible to make the city pothole-free in 10 days. So it is unclear what the government hopes for, by ordering BBMP to do this. It may as well order the rains to stop! Keeping a city pothole-free is not difficult. But that requires doing a few things right to BEGIN with. The responses after things go wrong won't help. The only thing we can hope for in 10 days is to see whether the government and the BBMP begin to do things differently in the way construction and maintenance contracts are set up for roads and footpaths.…

Karnataka Legislative Assembly elections are just a year away, and it’s time for residents in Bengaluru to register themselves in the electoral rolls. In Mahadevapura Legislative Assembly Constituency that is home to a large number of migrant population in the Information Technology and other sectors, it’s a huge challenge to get people registered in electoral rolls and make them vote in elections. Citizens in Whitefield and surrounding areas in Mahadevapura have come up with an initiative to fix this problem. Million Voter Rising, a campaign by Whitefield Rising, aims at enrolling at least one lakh voters to the electoral rolls…

Lalbagh - my beautiful slice of heaven was taken over for the past fifteen days for the flower show. A 250-year-old garden on 240 acres, with one of the most spectacular collections of trees in the world was trashed. Very disheartened to see the crowd fill the place with garbage even though there were dustbins kept all over the place. The heritage rock - a three hundred billion year old rock which is the major attraction of Lalbagh, was filled with plastic covers flying all over the place and soft drink bottles. Shame on us people! A so-called hi-tech city…

Tired of seeing such garbage blackspots? Unwalkable footpaths? Broken slabs on streetside drains converted to death traps? Construction rubble uncleared for months? This Independence Day, we are launching a new project by the people, for the people, of the people! This is your chance to support BBMP in identifying the bad spots in the city and reporting them, by mapping them. This data will be shared with BBMP directly and can help eliminate the blackspots in the city, help identify future blackspots, remove the construction debris and fix the broken unwalkable footpaths. All you have to do now is to…

Two years ago, Anirudh, father of a 9th standard student and resident of HSR Layout, decided to admit his daughter to a boarding school managed by a former athlete in Kodagu. Anirudh strongly feels that in a city like Bengaluru it’s not possible to send the budding athlete for training in Kanteerava Stadium twice a day due to traffic. So the child was shifted from Bengaluru to Kodagu with the sole intention of providing her a better athletics training. Mallika Jaswanth is a mother of two school-going kids. She is a resident of Old Airport Road and works as a…

The growth and development of humanity in the modern age kickstarted from the time of Renaissance. The hub of all new thoughts and ideas was Europe and it was the Silicon Valley of sorts back in the days. Colonial powers carried the ideas and the mindset with them as they traveled and took control of lands across the world. It intensified as we made rapid advances in technology in the late 19th and 20th centuries. But something else also happened at that time. Humanity went completely out of sync with nature and we declared war on the ecosystem that had…

Let us first analyse what is Khaatha. It is just an account number allotted to property owners by BBMP so that property tax paid by them is credited to that particular owner's 'account'. It is in no way different from a Bank Khaatha (account in English). It is directly derived from the earlier Property identifcation number like Survey number or previous Khaatha number. After allotting Khaatha, BBMP Officials move further to assess the property tax which is dependant on the area (how developed the area of the property is), and sq ft area of the relative property. It is also…

This is the second, no, the third time I have had problems with invaders of the pedestrian pavements in Bengaluru. And this time I have had the most painful experience which I blame solely on the cops for not controlling. I have a huge and painful gash on the front of my shin where there is hardly any flesh and what makes it worse is I am a chronic diabetic. Digging on the other side of Richmond Road. Pic: Mariane D Nazarath Three scooter-borne jay riders were racing down Hayes Road on the wrong side of the road while I…

Stormwater drain completely covered by leaves and mud. Pic: Srinivas Alavilli “A city will not die so long as its citizens do not give up.” – Ashwin Mahesh, Urban expert I am sure none of us wants to give up on namma Bengaluru. We love it. We are immensely proud of our beautiful city – resident’s pride and neighbors’ envy for all the global brand recognition!  More than a crore of us call it home. It was once called ‘pensioners paradise’ but today it is the paradise for the best and brightest to pursue innovation. We are not about to give…

The rocky plateau of Bengaluru was originally a combination of grassland and scrub and thorn forest, with small trees. We don’t know have a historical record of the original climate. But was it likely to have been warm and dry, just like the other districts nearby, namely Kolar and Chikballapur, possibly receiving only about 300-400mm of rain, with the temperatures somewhere in the mid-thirties? We don't know, but that's just a wild guess. Bengaluru’s first man-made climate change Though the city originally had a few tanks as water sources, around which settlements were built, those who ruled Bangalore, including Cholas…