CITIZEN JOURNALISM

The recent TN Assembly Elections saw the lowest voter turnout in the state in the past three elections. Chennai’s overall voter turnout stood at 59.06%, with only four constituencies registering turnout higher than 60%.What could explain the low turnout is that many eligible voters chose to sit it out on polling day and also that the inaccuracies in the voter rolls contributed to the issue. There have been instances of unexplained deletion of names of voters who found themselves unable to exercise their franchise in the assembly elections. Names of entire families who voted as recently as the Lok Sabha…

On March 22nd, I opened the  Aarogya Setu app on my phone to book our appointment for the second or booster dose of the Covishield vaccine. My husband and I had had our first shot before noon on March 1st, when the union government rolled out the programme for senior citizens like us. We were told we could take the next shot after 28 days. A few days' delay would not matter, added the doctor at the vaccination centre. The earliest appointment I got (confirmed via SMS) at our preferred centre, Yashoda Multi Specialty Hospital, Kaushambi, Ghaziabad, where we had taken…

Over the last few years, the city of Bengaluru has been growing beyond its potential. As a city with educated and active citizens, civic activism has been a significant decider in how the city develops.  One of the citizen activism initiatives has been developing the existing railway network to boost the suburban rail project.  A few years ago, the Government of Karnataka (Karnataka Rail Infrastructure Company (K-RIDE)) started developing a plan for the extension of these railway networks. It recently announced that the 48-km Baiyappanahalli-Hosur railway line will be double tracked by 2022.  Public Notice issued by Department of Forest…

Bengaluru has a planning history spanning more than fifty years. The first step towards planning for development of Bengaluru City was initiated with the Outline Development Plan prepared by the Bangalore Development Committee in 1952.  The city’s planning got statutory backing in 1961 when the Karnataka Town And Country Planning (KTCP) Act, 1961 was enacted.  The history of planned development in Bengaluru is seen in the timeline below. The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) is entrusted with the task of preparing a Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) as per the KTCP Act. Throughout Bengaluru city's planning history, thought to its future industrialisation,…

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…