CITIZEN JOURNALISM

There was a time when Harrington Road was exactly what it was meant to be: a quiet, tree-lined residential avenue, one of Chennai’s older and more established neighbourhood corridors. Families chose to live here because it offered something increasingly rare — space, calm, and a sense of community. Today, that same road tells a very different story. Along an approximately 800-metre stretch now stand eight schools, where there used to be three — three hospitals, three auditoriums, eateries and commercial outlets. Individually, each serves an important purpose. Collectively, however, they have created a level of activity that the road and…

Amid global crises like climate change, concepts such as solastalgia (distress produced by environmental change), eco-grief, and eco-anxiety are becoming familiar. Climate change’s impact on mental health has only recently cropped up in research, with studies finding connections between the climate and depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and suicidal thoughts. Around 50% of Indian youth aged 14 to 25 experienced increased stress due to worsening climate, according to a survey by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). Other studies have found that repeated experiences with flooding, which occur particularly in eastern and southern India, appear to contribute to…

Mahesh* owns a small paan and beedi shop near 90 Feet Road. His family has lived in Mumbai’s Dharavi for 50 years. Over the years, they added additional storeys above their home, a common practice in Mumbai's slums. The rent from these upper floors helps Mahesh care for his ageing parents. Redevelopment would cost him both his shop premises and this vital supplementary income. The Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) has given the go-ahead for the bioremediation of solid waste at the Deonar dumping yard to free the plot for housing “ineligible” residents (those lacking documentation) of the Dharavi…

On a regular day in May, the calls of migratory waders and other shorebirds foraging in sprawling mudflats fill the air in the southern reaches of Chennai. May is the dry season for the Pallikaranai Marsh, when water levels naturally recede, exposing the critical feeding and breeding grounds that attract hundreds of bird species to this globally recognised urban wetland. But this year is different. The mudflats are gone. In their place is a stagnant expanse of water. This unusual water level during the dry season is not due to early rains. Indiscriminate construction within the marsh is blocking the…

Every Friday morning, Aladdin Chitrakar travels from his village in Purba Medinipur, a coastal district in West Bengal, to Kolkata to showcase patachitra artwork created by him and his wife, Angoora Ji. They set up their stall at the weekend fair along the Biswa Bangla Sarani in the city that is widely known as a shopper’s paradise and a haven for art.  Their vibrant fish motifs and tribal figurines painted on wooden trays and white T-shirts are the source of livelihood through which the couple supports their two sons. Aladdin rents a small place to live for three days in…

Selomi's text arrived at 7 am. "Let's leave by 8.30. The traffic will be brutal otherwise." We both live about 10 kilometres from the government office we had been going to every day for the last two weeks. The nearest metro station is four kilometres from our homes, which means forty minutes to reach it, twenty on the metro, and twenty-five on foot from Vidhana Soudha to the office. An hour and twenty minutes each way, assuming nothing goes wrong. In Bengaluru, something always does. By the end of the second week, we had the routine down. Coffee in a…

The Straight-cut Flood Escape Channel project at Uthandi in the southern part of Chennai along East Coast Road was conceived by the Water Resources Department (WRD) as a flood mitigation measure, with a budget of ₹91 crores. The plan proposes a cut-and-cover drain through the VGP Layout in Uthandi, to connect the Buckingham Canal to the Bay of Bengal. The drain is supposedly meant to divert excess floodwater in Buckingham Canal during heavy rains, when areas around the Pallikaranai marsh and Okkiyam Madavu face flooding.  Work on the project started immediately after its inauguration in August 2025. However, residents of…

The City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO)'s decision to appoint Australian aviation consultancy Avisure to study bird movement around the Navi Mumbai International Airport has raised fresh questions about the future of Navi Mumbai's wetlands. The agency has cited the ongoing study as grounds to defer legal protection for DPS Flamingo Lake, arguing that no irreversible decision should be taken until the assessment of bird-related aviation risks is complete. But bird movement around the airport is not being studied for the first time. Findings of BNHS More than a decade ago, the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) was…

Koramangala is one of Bengaluru’s most recognisable neighbourhoods. Originally planned as a suburb, it witnessed a transformation in the 1990s thanks to its connectivity to Electronic City and the IT corridors along Outer Ring Road. This boom drew skilled professionals from across the country, converting Koramangala into a vibrant commercial hub. With its rapid growth, the question of public transport became even more important, not just for residents, but also for the businesses that thrive here. During OpenCity’s Bengaluru Datajam, organised around the theme of public transport, our group focused on Koramangala’s bus connectivity with the rest of the city.…

Nearly a decade ago, while I was working on the Revised Master Plan for Bengaluru (RMP 2031), a senior planner remarked: “Only the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) has the legal right to plan for Bengaluru.” Today, that assertion is unravelling in a tussle between the newly formed Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) and the BDA over who should plan for the city’s future. What is more troubling is that Bengaluru’s current master plan, the RMP 2015, is based on surveys from 2003, nearly two decades out of date. The Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act (KTCPA) of 1961 requires revision every…