CITIZEN JOURNALISM

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…

If there is one woman who truly inspires me every single day, it is Vidya. Originally from a village in Uttar Pradesh, marriage brought Vidya to Mumbai 15 years ago. Her husband was already working in the city. As Vidya learnt, the big city offers opportunities that may be lacking in villages and small towns, but life can be quite hard. About six years ago, Vidya's husband deserted her, leaving her to fend for herself and their three children who were at that time aged 9, 4 and an infant. The middle one, a daughter, is a special child, with…

On February 25, 2021, plans were announced from the highest levels of the state government to comprehensively develop Nandi Hills as an international tourist destination. This is to be done through various measures including a clean-up of the area, refurbishment of various structures and heritage sites, enlargement/improvement of the parking areas, and last but not the least, a ropeway to the summit.   My family and I moved home from the heart of Bengaluru to the foothills of Nandi Hills over seven years ago. The contrast in our altered lifestyles could not have been starker. Swapping traffic noise for bird song We…

Another wetland in Navi Mumbai is under threat. Lotus Lake is located in Sector 27, Nerul, very close to the Belapur Sports Ground. The approximately 3-hectare lake derives its name from the thousands of lotus plants that can be seen on its surface, and in fact, lends its name to several shops and buildings in the area. Lotus Lake, Nerul. (Pic: Sunil Agarwal) A notified wetland, but only on paper As per the National Wetland Atlas, the lake is a notified wetland. In its January 2019 assessment, the Thane Tahsildar has marked the Lotus Lake coordinates, officially known as "Darawe",…

Starting March 1, there has been much excitement among our senior citizens – and all because of the Covid vaccine. As one meme doing the social media rounds said, “Children take parents for vaccination!” My parents got the Covid vaccine at Dayanand Sagar Hospital, Kumaraswamy Layout, Bengaluru, on 4th March 2021.  They had registered on the Aarogya Setu app and managed to get an appointment after trying for several hours the previous day. Those familiar with the process would be aware that beneficiaries are asked to select the hospital and date and then choose between “Forenoon” and “Afternoon” slots.  Read…

In September 2020, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) refused permission to Maharashtra’s state and district central co-operative banks (DCCBs) to finance self-redevelopment of co-operative housing societies, stating that such projects would fall under the category of ‘commercial real estate,’ and hence, outside the banks’ primary purview of lending for activities related to agriculture and rural development. For the Maharashtra government, which was banking on support from the state’s co-operative banking ecosystem, this is as a huge blow to a scheme it had presented late last year as the solution to the state’s, and more specifically, Mumbai’s housing crisis. Meanwhile,…

As the world has become predominantly urban, with the impact of climate change being experienced worldwide, protecting forests everywhere, particularly close to urban areas, is critical. Forests, especially those near cities, serve in regulating local temperatures, cycling water and nutrients, as repositories of biodiversity, and as a critical resource for the sustenance of rural, pastoral and forest dependent communities. Forests are also sacred spaces for communities that continue to revere shrines inside such spaces.  Understanding the nature and composition of the forests, the community dependencies on them and the legal provisions that protect them is central to protect such forests…