bengaluru civic issues

The third edition of Janaagraha’s annual Bengaluru Civic Fest, held in association with Cisco, showcased how Gen Z is taking initiative to bring change in society. The one-day fest was held at the Bangalore International Centre, Domlur. It was a culmination of the IChangeMyCity Challenge, organised from August to December 2019, in which students were tasked with identifying a civic issue that affects their neighbourhood and to come up with an innovative solution to address it. Over 14,000 students from Classes VI to XII across India participated in the challenge through the IChangeMyCity Challenge portal, co-created by Cisco. Twenty-five teams,…

Bengalureans will get a chance to showcase their love for the city this Valentines Day. The Bengaluru Civic Fest organised by IChangeMyCity (an initiative of Janaagraha) along with the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) will be held on the 14th of February at Freedom Park from 10 am to 8 pm. The festival will be a platform where various civil society organisations and groups discuss their work, government agencies communicate their work with citizens and school children will discuss their participation with local governments. The festival will see the presence of BBMP mayor and Corporators. Sapna Kareem, coordinator, Civic Participation, Janaagraha,…

Sometime in MayBBMP workers had dredged out the storm water drain near my house, and left a mound of filth, muck, crushed plastic cups and assorted debris on the edge of the pavement on  8-F main road, Jayanagar. Each time it rained, some of the muck got washed right back into the drain. It was an eyesore and an olfactory assault. There are posh shops all along this road, hundreds of citizens walk or drive past, even park next to the pile of rubbish. The famous Jayanagar shopping complex is just across the road.I complained about it to the city…

A few weeks ago, on a Monday morning, while I was  trying to drive away the blues, I saw a few people standing and staring at the railway track near our house. Not another one, I hoped. But when I saw people in the crowd discussing something animatedly and calling up people  from their mobile phones, I could sense uneasiness. Someone who was crossing the railway track earlier that morning or the previous night was critically or fatally injured. I was pained to learn later that evening that the victim  succumbed to his injuries. He had been hit by a…