CITIZEN JOURNALISM

It is 4:15 a.m. and this is the scene at the gates of the Samta Nagar Post Office in Kandivali East, Mumbai. Men (mostly) just hanging around on the street, doing pretty much nothing. Chances are, they’ve done this before, but not early enough… the reason for this repeat visit. As I approach the group, Hukam Singh greets me. We were among the unlucky ones, not in the “first 20” of the previous morning. “Madam ka naam lick do bhai… athara” (write madam’s name brother… eighteen), said one. Yeah! I was in the first 20. This is probably the scene at…

Growing up in this beautiful city of gardens and lakes, one does wonder what happened to it over the past two decades. Any plans for the city’s future should carve a path of opportunities towards preserving what already works well, adding progressive and sustainable changes and allow the continuum of livability. The past couple of city development plans have been regressive and have lead this city towards a path of decay. This write up is a citizen’s analysis of what is proposed for a neighborhood (Planning District 07) in RMP 2031. Let’s start with some numbers. Land Use Planning District…

On Saturday, February 18th, Prof. Rajeev Gowda, Member of Parliament, spoke on ‘The Regulation of Risk’ at the Beyond Carlton Annual Memorial Lecture. The Carlton Towers Fire on February 23 2010 claimed nine lives and injured over 60 people. Family members of those affected by this accident got together to form Beyond Carlton which focuses on advocacy, accountability and creating awareness about the hazards of fire accidents in India. For the past few years, Beyond Carlton has been conducting an annual Memorial Lecture in February. Speakers in the past have included the likes of Swati Ramanathan, Co-founder Janaagraha;  R.A.Venkitachalam, Managing…

It works! It works! All ye skeptics, listen to this story. I am sure there are many more similar initiatives around the city, but this one I have personal experience of, having watched at close quarters, the week long-effort to bring a little smile to the face of namma ooru. On Saturday, February 3, the Ugly Indian, a group of volunteers trying to clean up Bengaluru’s streets, gathered at what used to be a long stretch of five vacant sites across the road from ISRO head office’s east side wall in Sanjay Nagar, and set to work. This used to…

A recent article on British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website listed Bengaluru among the 11 cities that will go out of water soon. The article said: " Local officials in the southern Indian city have been bamboozled by the growth of new property developments following Bangalore's rise as a technological hub and are struggling to manage the city's water and sewage systems. To make matters worse, the city's antiquated plumbing needs an urgent upheaval; a report by the national government found that the city loses over half of its drinking water to waste. Like China, India struggles with water pollution and…

Our preferred imagination of an urban lake is mostly blue water with a well-maintained walking track all along, some trees on the periphery and some birds on them. That imagination is of course broken when the lake stinks, froths, has plastic strewn around. And when we see overgrown typha reeds in the lake, floating hyacinth and alligator weed, when the lake turns from blue to green, that imagination is broken. And then we want to rejuvenate the lake and turn it blue again. Lower Ambalipura lake / wetland If we were to step back and think why is it that…

Dear Parties contesting in the Karnataka State Elections, Have you considered including Fire Safety in your election manifesto for the forthcoming election? If not, we urge you to do so. And here is why. There have been a spate of fire accidents in our country these past couple of months - be it at a liquor shop in Bengaluru or a hotel in Mumbai, or some other building in another city, town or village. In fact, as per NCRB 2015 data pertaining to Karnataka:  1244 died in fire accidents in 1 year  Of these, 781 were women and…

In the hope that online procedures in the Regional Transport Offices (RTO) had improved and gave the user a smooth experience,  I tried to file an application for the renewal of my driving licence online through the ‘Parivahan’ portal, a few days ago. I was unable to complete the process and I received a message asking me to contact the local RTO office. I went to the RTO Chennai (North) early on the morning of Jan 29th to file the manual application Form 9 along with Form 7 as well as Form 1a and a medical certificate, duly completed along…

The Revised Master Plan 2031 of Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) which reflects the BDA’s vision of the growth of Bangalore over the next 15 years was open for public comments recently. At the outset, when one examines the overall ELU (Existing Land Use) and PLU (Proposed Land Use), there doesn’t seem to be any errors. The errors become evident when one examines the LU (Land Use) classification for each of the 42 PDs (Proposed District). First, the ELU areas of PDs does not add up to the total ELU mentioned for Industry, Unclassified, Transport, Vacant and Agriculture Land Uses. The…

Walking along the beach for nearly 8 km and looking for nests of turtles, dead in the middle of the night, can be both fascinating and tiring. Watching an olive ridley turtle coming to shore to nest, a process that is older than dinosaurs, can be exhilarating. If not, the waves, the sand and the conversations around the environment we live in amongst people from different backgrounds can be rewarding. The fluorescent glow of the increasingly rare Noctilucas, a bioluminescent organism, adds to the beauty of the ‘turtle walk’. However, turtle conservation is not as easy as it sounds. It also…