CITIZEN JOURNALISM

My first memories of Hyderabad are the long evening walks watching the sunset along Necklace Road, as a young architecture student welcoming the millenium new year. Now twenty years later, the city has been my home for almost three years, and those memories remain preserved even as the city has grown rapidly, not just in size but aspirations too.  Hyderabad Metropolitan area has been consistently ranked as one of the most liveable cities in India with The Mercer Quality of Living Rating 2019 ranking Hyderabad and Pune as the top cities in India, making it one of the emerging investment…

“What’s the way forward?” is a familiar refrain among much-harried motorists and pedestrians when negotiating the tortuous Konanakunte Cross traffic signal. To say that “chaos” prevails there at all hours is too modest a description.  Generally, a “Z” crossing cutting across a national highway creates complicated dynamics at any traffic junction. Synchronised traffic lights cannot prevent longer wait periods of vehicles and will only lead to lengthier, slow moving lines of traffic.  Crisscrossing paths of vehicles in motion causes confusion and disorientation, especially for first-timers passing through the busy Konanakunte Cross (K-Cross) junction. Traffic movement at present on Kanakapura Road…

We wrap up our coverage for this month with two stories on International Women's Day, observed on March 8 every year. The first was about how labouring women workers commemorated it this March. Here's the second. There was no concept or significance of March 8 when I was growing up. Not in my school. Not in my feminist college. Not in my university, post graduation. Not at my first job in advertising. Not at the production house that I joined later.  It was never mentioned or celebrated. And then suddenly in March 2001, there was a burst of Women’s Day…

We wrap up our coverage for this month with two stories on International Women's Day, observed on March 8 every year. The first of the two stories finds out how labouring women workers commemorated it this March. Among the savarna middle classes in Bengaluru, International Women’s Day on March 8 is celebrated with marathons and rallies, discounts in supermarkets, and ladies’ nights at pubs.  What is often swept under the label of ‘women empowerment’ is the history of Women’s Day as that of workers and their unionisation. It was first proposed and celebrated in 1910 during the second International Conference…

In India, repair is ubiquitous and it is cheap. There is always a repairer at the street corner or on the footpath or under a tree or even under staircases. Of course, there are repairers with shops or stalls or mobile carts. The informal sector provides earnings for an overwhelming majority of the skilled population but it fails to provide social security. During the lockdown, many of us would have quietly shifted to work from home. But in the informal sector, it was a crisis from the first day as they were being robbed of their basic right to work on the street.…

On November 20, 2020, the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) issued a notification to increase the annual CFO (Consent For Operation) charges steeply.  This notification is applicable to all Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs), including the ones operated by Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) and the private ones operated by the apartments, hospitals, malls, office complexes, IT parks, and others.  There are major issues with increasing the annual CFO charges. Here are some of the issues listed: 1. KSPCB levies CFO charges only from 40 per cent of the public who treat their sewage in their own STP…

With Bengaluru Urban district recording 1,280 COVID-19 cases on March 23, the city has been witnessing a sharp rise in its spread.  With two young people in Ballari testing positive for the South African variant of COVID, the Karnataka government has begun tightening up its safety measures.  In Bengaluru, the BBMP has been asked to ramp up its testing to 40,000 RT-PCR tests per day. However, so far only about 37,000 tests are carried per day and the BBMP Commissioner says that the lag is a result of people’s reluctance to get tested. BBMP continues to ensure through its team…

The Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) released a guideline for Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) design and location on March 1, 2021. This article, the second in a three-part series, analyses the provisions of this guideline. In a nutshell, the guideline is riddled with technically wrong, poor recommendations. If this guideline is forced on builders and STP manufacturers, they will end up producing substandard STPs that will be too expensive for users to run, and their frequent failures will result in even more expenses for builders and RWAs alike. This will also create huge friction between builders and RWAs about…

My friend Arun, spends 20-30 minutes everyday, waiting in his car at the toll plaza to exit Mumbai so that he can reach his office in Thane. Like him, there are lakhs of vehicles that exit and enter the island city of Mumbai daily. I used to as well, but not since I switched jobs. Blessed with a seafront on most of its periphery, there are only 5 entry/ exit points for vehicular traffic in Mumbai: Dahisar (Western Express Highway)Vashi (Sion-Panvel Highway)Mulund East (Eastern Express Highway)Airoli (Mulund-Airoli Bridge)Mulund West (LBS Marg). Data compiled by Mumbai Vikas Samiti in Dec 2018…

A multi-cause walk! What is that, you might ask. Well, I conducted one at Turahalli “Tree Park” (I have to put that odd name in inverted commas still!) on February 13. We have, for some time now, been protesting vigorously against the Karnataka Forest Department (KFD), who after already carving out a slice of the Turahalli forest and making a “Tree Park”, were proposing to make yet another one, with cement seats and play areas and sandpits, in the middle of the last standing piece of the once-majestic forest.  After strong protests, the KFD finally climbed down and said they…