Blogs

The documents/ replies that I have received from various offices of BBMP in the last five months, to my RTI query on illegal hoardings, are piled up before me. Yet, they have no data that I asked for. Pic: Akshatha It has been precisely five months since I filed an RTI application with the Advertisement department of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) seeking information about legal and illegal advertisement hoardings in the city. (If you haven’t read the first piece you can read it here). And today as I write this second post about the status of my application, I…

Sewage and plastic waste has been steadily pouring into Kaikondrahalli lake for the last few months from the eastern side of the lake. On the evening of 12th May 2016, a private landowner from that side breached the lake bund with JCB and drew a channel to empty sewage from his land directly into the lake. Despite best efforts from the BBMP Lakes dept led by Mr Satish (Chief Engineer), Mr Jagannath (Executive Engineer) & Ms Shilpa (Asst Engineer), and the surrounding community volunteers, gallons of accumulating and fresh raw sewage have been entering the lake for past 4 months.Since…

Encouraged by the success of Neighbourhood Watch (NW) initiative in Whitefield, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South East Division), Dr Boralingaiah M B has announced the extension of the programme to other areas of South East Division, ie, Kadugodi, Varthur, HAL and (Old) Airport. In an event organised by Whitefield Rising (WR) on August 20, 2016, at Ecumenical Christian Centre (ECC), the DCP launched the NW4 Group within Whitefield PS limits to cover residents of ECC Road. The first such group was formed near Forum Value Mall in March, and two other groups followed.   As over 50 citizens from different…

Ten weeks have flown by and my internship with Citizen Matters has come to a quick end. Tomorrow, I will board a flight, but I will not be leaving India just yet. I am looking forward to three weeks of travel around the subcontinent to see what else this country has to offer. The author on the beach in Goa. Pic: Kate Clark But soon enough, I will be struggling to nap on 16-hour flight back to Dallas, Texas. When I picture exiting the Dallas Fort-Worth airport, driving a few miles toward my parent’s house in suburban Texas, I can…

Don't rush for credit, ask for cash too. Our birding group just got this pleading email: Hello,I am ___ , from ___ newspaper, I am looking for a photograph of Grey Hornbill, sighted in the City, supporting the news write up. If some one has one has one photograph, please do send with credentials. My deadline is 7pm. Please. My response to the egroup: This is going to be a very unpopular post in several circles, but I need to say it. Just a word to everyone that when I was getting articles published in your paper regularly, many years…

Just like Kunti who had Karna on one side and five sons on the other, Mother Kaveri, in the wildlife sanctuary that I visit, flows with Tamil Nadu on one bank, and Karnataka on the other. How does the mother feel, when she sees her children at war with each other? Is it water that flows, or a torrent of tears, for the inability of siblings to get along with each other?

As I walked to and from my daughter's home (J P Nagar 3rd Phase to and fromJayanagar 4th T Block) I noticed the following good citizens of the city and state: Several young men on two-wheelers with yellow-and-red Karnataka flags, yelling, "bEkE bEku! nyAyA bEku!" They stopped near me to re-group. I talked to one of them (indeed, a foolhardy thing to do)...and asked, "nyAyA (justice) for what?" The young man said, "We've been told to go around the area, saying this." Not even the pretence of understanding what the issue is. A group of men sitting under the Karnataka…

I was attending a book launch ("Junkland Journeys", by Ajith Pillai) and from where I sat (apparently it had been the bar of the Mallu restaurant which used to be there earlier!) I looked down and saw this scene below.   Having clicked it, I found that the gentleman and the two children came and joined the book launch event, so I took their permission to use this photogrph in my blog. Love of reading is a great gift given to us, and it's even more heartening when one finds an adult willing to take the time and effort to…

The CBSE action against NPS schools is a classic study of everything that is wrong in the way we manage education. Without going into the specifics of NPS itself, we should be able to see the wrinkles in the canvas. a. First, the public school system is bad. To be precise, it is one of the WORST IN THE WORLD. It is so bad that even poor people are fleeing it, and putting children in private schools at their own cost. In Karnataka, only one out of three children who depend on the state pass high school, and even among…

Today marks my 12th day in Bengaluru and I am proud to say my desire to take pictures of every single passing cow has subsided. Since arriving the weekend before last, I filled my phone’s camera roll with photos of cattle, likely confusing many passersby who have shared the roads with these guys their whole lives. I laughed out loud on several occasions, like when a large group of them walked right past my gate one evening, or when I moved out of the way of one only to have it move the same way putting me right back in…