CITIZEN JOURNALISM

Chennai has seen an unprecedented spike in COVID-19 cases in recent months. This has resulted in many individuals affected by the illness having to be hospitalised or placed in home isolation. During this time, individuals and families have found it difficult to access medicines, groceries and other essentials. Chennai's cyclists have come together in this hour of need to provide this important service, free of cost to those in need. The idea of Relief Riders originated from cyclists in Bengaluru and was later replicated by Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Jaipur cyclists. At the end of April, Felix John - Bicycle…

March 24 2020. India entered a two-month long national lockdown as part of a strategy to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. One year later, we are seeing a massive resurgence of cases. While the battle goes on in hospitals across India, there is another battle being fought on social media – The Battle Of Misinformation. This past year, we have seen numerous messages going viral on platforms like Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter – messages preaching some extremely ridiculous and imaginative home-remedies for protection against COVID. Because of widespread panic, and a certain desperation to act, people are falling prey to these…

With COVID second wave, there has been a lot of attention on how crematoriums in Bengaluru are being managed. According to a report in The News Minute, between April 18 and 22 alone, 860 bodies were cremated in six facilities in the city — Kudlu, MS Palya, Peenya, Sumanahalli, Kengeri and Panathur -- plus the Christian and Muslim burial grounds. However, BBMP has had to temporarily close a few crematoriums so as to repair damaged furnaces. Authorities have now been forced to restart the traditional open-air crematoriums to manage the increasing number of deaths.  The question one is left with…

Each time a survey, however small or flawed it is, places Bengaluru on top of its list, you can be rest assured that the government will paste full-page advertisements in papers, of its leaders claiming credit for it. Wonder why there is complete silence when Bengaluru became the city with the most active COVID cases not just in India, but across the world. After all, the political establishment has perhaps contributed more to Bengaluru’s horrifying COVID scenario than it has in the city being ‘the most liveable’, ‘most dynamic’ or for being the start-up capital.  At crematoria, at hospitals, in…

With Bengaluru becoming the most traffic-congested city in the world in 2020, mass transit is the key ingredient for a sustainable, low carbon footprint future and the only solution to decongest Bengaluru's roads. However, the perception that cost effective transport options are primarily for use by the economically weaker section of the society, is a big worry.  The extensive bus network of Bengaluru, with a fleet size of over 6775 buses, is the largest in India, and among the 20 largest in the world. Why then is it not leveraged as a solution to its traffic congestion? Even with the…

On a day Karnataka’s Covid number crossed 50k, with 50% of it coming from Bengaluru alone, the attention was else where. All thanks to the sting operation conducted by BJP MP Tejasvi Surya, MLAs Ravi Subramanya, Satish Reddy and Uday Garudachar, all from the ruling party, on 4th May 2021. Was anyone surprised that there was corruption in bed allocation? I wasn’t. Was corruption really the focus of the sting operation? You tell me. Seventeen workers out of the 206 employed in the COVID war room were fired for being Muslim. A smear campaign Among the arrested so far, a…

School seems a memory of the remote past. The play dates have stopped too. Add to it a general sense of foreboding, constant restrictions and in some cases, illness and death witnessed in very close circles. Children, both my own and among friends and family I've spoken to, are terrified with what's going on. They're also lost and confused. First, they're afraid of catching the virus themselves. My 8-year old keeps smelling things all day to ensure he hasn't lost his sense of smell. If he feels hot (it's summer), he asks us to take his temperature. If his legs…

[Based on a conversation with Dr P V Karthik] In the fight against the current COVID tsunami that’s engulfing us, we, along with a group of amazing volunteers (most of them being young college students and young working professionals), have been trying to respond to SOS tweets and alerts coming in from various parts of the country. With the number of SOS cases increasing from Chennai, we assembled a dedicated team of volunteers to cater to region-specific requests.  Those who made calls to hospitals in the last 3-4 days will know how difficult it is to get a bed in…

Coronavirus is devastating and many families have lost multiple members due to the infection. We are seeing many young people losing lives. We have a recommendation for parents with young children. Please make a plan for your child/children if and when you fall sick. Identify family or friends in the community, or in the city, who will take care of them, even if your child is suspected to have COVID and needs care-taking. That means that the care-giver should not have elderly parents or co-morbidities which would not allow them to offer this support. Tough as it may be, do…

The devastation that we see around us today caused by the second wave of COVID-19 in the country, is not just because of the rates of contagion and the virulence of the disease, but also — and perhaps, more significantly — because of the crunch in life-saving resources. Especially something we have always taken for granted — Oxygen.  But why did the country run short of oxygen and have we been able to find solutions to tide over the shortage? Although oxygen is the element primarily responsible for sustaining life on planet Earth and constitutes 21% of the atmosphere, oxygen…