Blogs

For over ten days now, Citizen Matters has followed the hectic election campaigns of candidates around the city. A mixed reality has already come out from our talking to candidates, their campaigners and voters. Some, for e.g. in Koramangala ward, have told us this: historically middle and high income groups (‘English-educated avaru’) won’t come out and vote on election day, so we cannot count on them for actually winning the race. We’ll stick to the ‘slums’.Others have done the opposite. Depending on the ward itself, many mainline party candidates have taken out door-to-door campaigns canvassing in higher income neighbourhoods and…

  The summer sun sets over Varthur Lake.Pic By Ravi Kaushik.

To see the Hasiru Usiru Mobility Manifesto,click here A document produced with many inputs and a lot of thought and hard work! ⊕

Another blogger whose blog I've followed since he was on LiveJournal, comes to the same conclusion that many of us have, about the widening of our roads... The other day, walking down Dr. Rajkumar Road in Rajajinagar, I saw several signboards on the road, on shopfronts, on buildings, etc. protesting against plans for widening the road. Apparently they want to widen the road and thus want to demolish shops, parts of houses, etc. Looking outside my own apartment building the other day, I saw some numbers written on the compound wall. Digging deeper, I figured that they want to widen…

I spent sometime during the past week reading about a number of candidates in various election wards of BBMP. I have got email from some of them, and sms-es from some others. I've watched them walk by on the streets in my neighbourhood and in other areas. I've been reading the daily news reports about the elections that every paper is now carrying. I've seen the profiles posted on websites, including the one I moderate. And occasionally, I've watched a few minutes of campaign coverage and talk shows on TV.I encourage you to do all this too, because there's something…

Celebrating the International Women's Day centenary, the Network of Women in Media, Bangalore (NWMB), Network of Women in Media, India's (NWMI) local chapter and the Bangalore Press Club, co-hosted a lively and thoughtful exchange on the Changing Role of Women in Media for nearly thirty media professionals, social activists, freelance writers and students on 13th March 2010 from 3.00-5.30 pm. Tanushree Gangopadhyay, (veteran journalist previously at Deccan Herald, Indian Express and other national publications) and Anita Cheria (independent writer on human rights issues) NWMB's present joint coordinators, welcomed the participants and moderated the discussion respectively. NDTV anchor Vasanti Hariprakash, (formerly…

March 22nd World Water Day...here are some headlines:New bill to penalize those wasting drinking water-Deccan Herald, Bangalore March9Privatisation no solution to tackle water shortage in city- Deccan Herald March 9Water Crisis to worsen in city- Deccan Herald March 12City is the second highest water waster in country at 50.9% New Delhi tops the list at 52.4%- Deccan Herald March 13********** While all these questions remain unanswered and new ones added, the city gets thirstier under the scorching summer sun and the water vendors make a fast buck( in some instances as much as Rs 1000) for a tank load of…

Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore is organizing a free 'Vacation Training Program on Bio-Resources' for students from April 19th to 8th May 2010. Funded by Department of Bio-Technology, Government of India, this program consists of lectures and interactive sessions with eminent scientists and experts in the field of biology and bio-resources, visits to research institutes, orientation to skills required for field-biology and out-door camps. Students who have appeared Class X examination in 2010 from recognized schools in Karnataka are eligible to apply. Application forms can be downloaded from our website. For more details visit http://atree.org/vtp-2010…

Citizen Matters is organising two election debates/meet-the-candidates interactions in your area - one for BTM Ward (176) and one for JP Nagar ward (177). Both events will happen on the weekend of March 20-21. March 28, will be a historic day for both Bengaluru and the High Court of Karnataka. For 3 1/2 years, the city did not have its own government and that will soon change. If the High Court had not put its foot down repeatedly, we may have seen even more postponements. For a number of reasons this election may turn out to be a watershed in…

 After mindlessly surfing the networking world, I finally thought I'll write something. What then shall I write about? The current hot topics are Women's Reservation Bill & IPL.Forget IPL, everyone wants to write about it - whether it concerns cricket or not. The women's reservation bill - well, I don't like reservation of any kind. But that's another story altogether.So what do I want to write about? Well, there's the BBMP election. An election that has been postponed so much that I'm not too sure it'll happen until the D-day. The ward I live in has a SC, W category.…