CITIZEN JOURNALISM

Sights and sounds at Yediyur Lake I am not immune to FB posts, so when there was a sudden rush of bird sightings from Yediyur kere, I realized that I'd not visited for many years. When Padma and Ramaswamy suggested going there this morning, I was very happy to join them. So many trees have fresh leaves right now, like this Peepal tree: This lake is maintained well. However, the fact of its being completely fenced around, and having all growth stunted to bush size except for a few spots, made it feel more "manicured" than I am comfortable with...but…

Rotary Bangalore Palmville in association with Bangalore Political Action Committee (B.PAC) today organized an award ceremony to give away My Place of Pride Awards 2017. My Place of Pride is an initiative to recognize eco-friendly communities in Bengaluru city and encourage sharing of best practices and motivate people to adopt sustainable practices. The contest was for the following categories: The Contesting communities were evaluated on the following: Self declaration Polling Physical inspection 102 communities comprising over 200,000 citizens across the city registered for the contest. 57 communities made it to the second shortlist base on their Self – Declaration submissions detailing…

Our first reaction when we see litter on the streets, dump yards along our highway or near our home, street animals eating the bits of rubbish along with the plastic covers:  Uuhgghh….!! Can anything at all be done to end this? Can’t the government do something to clean up? Can we stop rampant garbage burning? Only about 25% of the waste generated in Chennai is treated, the rest is merrily added to the waste dumps, creating pollution and in-turn affecting our health. Can we do something about this? Exploring these questions, some of us at Bhumi NGO decided to start by…

It's not an uncommon fact anymore that Bengaluru suffers from one of the worst traffic conditions in the whole country, where it can surprisingly take an hour to travel a distance as short as a few kilometres. While the daily victims of this grim state of affairs unsparingly blame the administration for the poor metro coverage, insufficient flyovers, dilapidated roads, and unprepared public transportation; here we propagate a specific issue which has seldom been discussed. Bengaluru's red lights at the traffic signals usually last for exorbitantly long durations that can be up to 5 minutes. Go to Koramangala sony signal…

Sex worker unions codemned the step taken by the Karnataka State government for forming Jayamala Committee to conduct a survey of sex workers by making false promises of free housing and loans. Karnataka Sex workers Union organized a protest in Townhall recently, against the exclusion of Sex workers organisations by Jayamala Committee. Sex workers and Human Rights activists participated in this protest. Sex workers protested near Town Hall recently. Pic: Manohar Elavarthi The General Secretary of the Karnataka Sex Workers Union Bharathi said: “The Government of Karnataka formed a committee headed by Smt. Jayamala to study the situation of Sex…

Thousands of dogs serve our country as part of the Indian Army, the Police, the Railway Police Force, CISF, etc. About 1,200 serve in just the Army. At VOSD (The Voice of Stray Dogs), we call them Patriot Dogs. We have been keeping these dogs discharged by the Karnataka, Kerala, and Railway Police Forces among others. Sandhya from Mangalore Police. Pic:VOSD Patriot Dogs are trained in various specialties like explosive detection, tracking down insurgents or terrorists, and mounting massive search-and-rescues. From the tender age of just two months, they serve our country through the prime of their lives - usually…

On any normal weekday morning, if you take a peek into Google maps with Traffic on, and zoom into the East of Bengaluru, you can see some dark lines forming around Tin Factory. This gets input from two green lines – the Old Madras Road and the Outer Ring Road from Kalyan Nagar. The ORR from Kalyan Nagar used to be a mess, but these days things seem to be in some sort of control. This dark line extends all the way till the KR Puram Railway station, becoming green again as traffic rushes out from that point, like kids…

Air pollution has always been a mainstream concern with an underwhelming response towards remediating the situation. More recently, the interest has been re-ignited in India with several Indian cities having the highest levels of air pollution in the world. In addition, a report estimates over 650,000 deaths in India in 2015 due to outdoor (ambient) air pollution alone, and an even higher number due to indoor air pollution (1.2 million). These are only mortality estimates, and the impact on morbidity is a lot more widespread. News articles on air pollution and its impacts in Bengaluru are usually based on studies…

The Bengaluru Bus Prayanikara Vedike and Citizens for Bengaluru met the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday, demanding Bus Bhagya in the upcoming State Budget. He listened to our demands on 'Halve the Fares and Double the Fleet' and has agreed to consider our demands presented in the memorandum along with 'Janara Budget Goshti' conducted yesterday. With the budget coming up on Wednesday, it is important that the State Government considers our demands so that by encouraging public transport traffic congestion can be eased and air pollution reduced. We believe the Congress government can bring significant changes to the city by encouraging ordinary…

BBMP contract workers protested in front on BBMP on Womens' Day. Even as the BBMP had organised exhibitions and other programs for Women’s day, more than a thousand women contract Powrakarmikas of Bengaluru gathered at the BBMP head office to ask the BBMP, why these working women were being denied their rights. Workers from Indiranagar, RT Nagar, Koramanagala, Hegganahalli, Kengeri, Ramamurthy nagar, Gandhinagar, Banaswadi, Yelahanka and several other areas, braved threats from contractors and participated in the protest. The Contractor of Horamavu and Rammurthynagar has even threatened to fire the workers for being part of the protest. Students, several activists…