citizen activism in bangalore

“Lakes are like the organs and rajakaluve, or the storm water drains that connect them, are like nerves. Organs will not survive without the nerves,” says Captain Santhosh Kumar, an army veteran who has been volunteering towards identifying and restoring storm water drains and lakes of Bengaluru. Read more: 50% stormwater drains lost: Bengaluru’s flooding is no surprise It all started when Kumar, a military intelligence officer hung up his boots and returned to his native village Anekal in Bengaluru urban district, in 2008. He was shocked when he saw the villagers struggle for water while the water mafia pumped the…

Long before it was called the commuter rail or the suburban rail, it was known as the circular rail. When it was first talked about in the 1980s, it sounded like simplicity itself: Bengaluru has railway tracks on three sides -- East, North and West. Build tracks on the Southern side and voila, we will have a circular railway that goes all around the city. Well, that was the plan. Let alone its name, even the concept of a circular railway was forgotten. Years later, when several mass transit options were considered to meet the growing city's transport needs, the…

When 2020 started, we wouldn’t have imagined that schools would shut down, playing outdoors would be unsafe, regular income will be affected, and that staying at home would become the only way to stay safe.  Personally, I  haven’t been able to venture out for plogging -- something that I have enjoyed doing for close to three years now. Running-plus-picking-waste has been an effective way of keeping the environment clean and creating awareness. COVID made me and my team, The Indian Ploggers Army, realise that even if we’re not able to plog, there are other things we can do. The gaps…

In the past few weeks, many Bengalureans protested the reopening of Cubbon Park to vehicles, saying this lung space needs to be protected. The 300-acre park had been closed for about five months since the imposition of COVID lockdown. The protesters pointed to examples like Central Park in New York, where city authorities have completely banned motorised traffic. Despite protests, the State Horticulture Department allowed the park to be opened to vehicles last week based on a request from the Bengaluru Traffic Police. On the morning of 24 August, some 25 citizens from the #ConcernCollective gathered at Cubbon Park, demanding…

Bengaluru has seen many citizen-driven campaigns around sustainable mobility. Notable among them was the 'Bus Day' campaign spearheaded by the non-profit Praja RAAG. Subsequently, several volunteer groups have campaigned for effective, efficient and reliable public transport. The BMTC (Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation) has also launched several initiatives - Pink Buses, Vayu Vajra Volvo, G8 buses and so on - to promote the use of public transport. On July 9, Citizen Matters and Radio Active hosted a Twitter chat where experts and citizens discussed the past, present and future of public transport in the city. As the COVID crisis worsens and…

https://soundcloud.com/citizenmatters/ep4-lessons-from-bengaluru-cm In the concluding episode of our podcast series 'Lessons from Bengaluru', we explore how Bengaluru came to have a unique, vibrant citizen activism scene. While activism was a preserve of the few earlier, this changed since the 2000s as the city started facing more challenges. And now we have citizen activists holding authorities accountable on anything from infrastructure projects like steel flyover, to ward-level governance. Pravir Bagrodia and Srinivas Alavilli from two citizen collectives - Whitefield Rising and Citizens for Bengaluru (CfB) respectively - discuss how their groups came into being and what they have been working on. While…

This September 1st, revised penalties for traffic violations under the new Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019, came into effect. Parliament had passed the law in July, at its budget session. The law has provisions for licensing cab aggregators, making contractors liable for faulty road design, changing license renewal rules, and so on. But what has caught the attention of citizens is the stringent penalties for road traffic violations. Citizens have taken to social media to voice their vexation on fines that add up to amounts they've never imagined paying. I was a bit taken aback by all the outrage about…

Never before in the history of Bengaluru (or even other Indian cities), have we heard of non-partisan groups of citizens reaching out to all their candidates, preparing a bunch of hard questions, and interviewing each candidate on video, and working to share the video with all voters in their constituency so each one of them can make the most informed choice. Mahadevapura’s Million Voter Rising (MVR) team has been working from late 2016 to enroll voters in their constituency. They went to court filing a PIL when they found irregularities in the enrollment process and protested when majority (more than…

A day before Valentine’s, news broke that the Government of Karnataka had quietly tabled an amendment to Karnataka Tree Preservation Act of 1976. Under the proposed amendment, 50 trees were added to the list of 27 existing species that would no longer require permission to be chopped down. Many of these trees were favourites with Bengalureans - Gulmohars , Flame of the forest, Yellow Bells, African Tulips and even the humble Ashoka tree which lined many of the pavements in the city. Most of them were flowering species who’d bloom to their full glory in summer, adding to the beauty…

About a year ago, the government of Karnataka approved a steel flyover road that would run from Basaveshwara Circle till the Kempapura junction after the Hebbal interchange, to ease the traffic congestion leading to the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) which was estimated to cost a whopping Rs 2,100 crore. Little did they know this project would become a lynchpin that would energise citizen activism like never before. Thousands of people came out on an early Sunday morning to form a human chain and tell their government that it was a terrible idea. The offset of a collective awareness that Bengalureans…