Column: Civic Reflections

News reports say Bengaluru mayor Sharadamma broke into tears when minister R Ashoka threatened to cut her funds allocation unless she apportioned the amount he wanted, to his loyalists. Sharadamma has refuted this, saying that she "did not cry". The point is not whether she did or didn't cry, but whether it is acceptable for a minister to dictate that the disbursement of funds should satisfy his loyalists, according to his whims rather than leaving it to the mayor's discretion. Minister R Ashoka has always had plenty to do with Bangalore's politics. Mayor Sharadamma Ramanjaneya seen here in the centre,…

LPG (cooking gas) has a foul smell (to enable leaks to be quickly detected, for safety). The real foul smell however, now comes from the government's sordid handling of the rules on the supply of LPG to the public.While announcing the latest petrol price hike on 16 September, a proposal was also mooted for "limiting" the availability of cooking gas (LPG) to those paying income tax, owning a house or two wheeler. The plan was shelved "for the time being" due to opposition from users as well as opposition parties. On the one hand, the middle class are threatened with…

An announcement from BBMP in newspapers a while back has asked for citizens to write in with objections if any, to the proposed changes in road names. It is not just roads but also areas that have been renamed (among them Frazer Town, which everybody still refers to as Frazer Town rather than as Pulakeshinagar.The rationale for name changes is that the old names are relics from a colonial past and that we need to commemorate our own, indigenous heroes and  leaders (from Kittur Chennamma to Kempe Gowda, to former judge, governor and freedom fighter Nittoor Srinivasa Rau) which is…

BMTC fares went up a month ago, and hikes in petrol/diesel prices were cited as the reason. The story is more complicated than that. The real reasons are the three C-s -- ‘Collection' , Corruption among staff, and Complete apathy towards commuters' convenience or rights. 364E is a route that plies from Boopasandra in north Bangalore to south Bangalore (beyond Jayanagar) so it is very convenient for people like me who travel from north to south regularly. If I get 364 E, I can go directly to Jayanagar, otherwise I have to take two buses, one to Majestic or Shivajinagar…

The blame game is one of the easiest to play -- and Facebook turns out to be an unlikely source to drive home this point.  Take a look at the Bangalore Traffic Police's (BTP) Facebook page. The city's traffic is chaotic,  the number of rule breakers is horrendous, and the number of  offenders pulled up or punished is a small fraction of those who deserve to be penalised.True. But how many of us try to put ourselves in the shoes of the BTP, to  see  whether the blame is all  to be laid solely at their doors, for this state…

I waited. And he waited. I waited some more and he too waited some more. Impasse. Flustered and confused, I looked at him -- and waited again. He too stared at me, with a hint of impatience and bafflement. My first day at Cambridge, UK, on a pleasant May morning. I had stepped out and while making my way along the pavement saw a cyclist coming down the same way (cyclists and pedestrians share the same pathways skirting the roads). Used to Bangalore's "get-out-of-my-way" culture, I assumed he had right of way, and waited, while he, following the local road…

"Consuming this product, especially early in the morning, may be injurious to your health" - we don't have this warning printed at the top of the front page of our daily newspaper. But they should. Because reading newspaper does make one's blood pressure shoot up. This scam or that rip of, all accusing or implicating VIPs who are supposed to be our leaders, administrators and adjudicators. Involving not just lakhs but hundreds of crores, even lakhs of crores. A day care centre's roof collapse  killing children, a substandard construction causing death, contaminated water causing illness, a woeful, criminal  lack of…

In the last week of March, while World Water Day was being marked globally with a focus on "Urban Water Management". But our own urban administrators were busy - giving out contradictory statements about metropolitan water management and plans for tackling water scarcity as summer sets in; leaving citizens with emotions ranging from confusion to anger that can be as enervating as thirst. The Karnataka Groundwater (Regulation and Control of Development and Management)  bill passed recently forbids drilling of  borewells in groundwater-depleted areas (and most areas are depleted, with the water table sinking to incontrovertibly alarming levels)  but four days…

Citizens Action Forum (CAF), a federation of Residents Welfare Associations (RWA) in Bangalore, held a meeting on Saturday February 19, at the Central College Senate Hall at which three issues were tabled for discussion – the move  by BBMP to hike property tax by 15 per cent, water supply, and  the garbage problem. CAF meeting. From L: M S Mukunda, B N Vijaykumar, Manjunath, Lalithabai, Ashwathnarayana, Venkat Raju and Govindraju. Pic: Meera K. A full house saw representatives of RWA and concerned citizens voice their opinions on these issues to seek responses from ward representatives and MLAs. What remained at…

I have heard of plugged in electrical  gadgets and equipment, but it is now "plugged in humans" - wherever on goes, one sees men and women, girls and boys, all with wires dangling from their ears  and fiddling with buttons on a mobile, and oblivious to the world around them. Listening to music presumably, while riding on a bus, which is okay I guess.  Or while driving a two or four wheeler - not okay at all - studies have shown that being on the cell phone or listening to music through an ear phone causes distraction from the road…