DATA

If you were to ask any commuter in any Indian city about their daily pet peeve, it would be the time spent in traffic. And now, Ola, the new age mobility platform serving 110 cities with 8 lakh vehicles on the roads has presented a year-end glimpse of 'how India commuted' based on their records. Some highlights from the top seven cities - Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata, and Chennai: Total average traffic speed dropped by a whopping 2.9km/hr with Bangalore registering the slowest at 17.2km/hour Ola Share has saved 4 times the fuel from last year, telling of the high customer adoption…

It’s been close to two years since the first 20 cities were selected under the much talked-about Smart Cities Mission (SCM) of the Government of India, but progress under the mission has been slow. Let us just look at the top five cities. Selected in January 2016, these cities - Bhubaneswar, Pune, Jaipur, Surat and Kochi - are supposed to complete the proposed projects under the SCM by 2021-22. But most of these cities appear to be lagging behind schedule, both in terms of the number of projects completed as well as the works under progress. Surat leads, with works…

Citizen Matters had published a story 'Bengaluru on poll mode: Get registered as voter for 2018 elections'. But unfortunately, CEO-Karnataka website is a mess and the authorities are defensive. Even when you use their URL, it takes you to some other site or gives 404 error. Only Kannada version of the new rolls is published. They are CAPTCHA-protected and are image files. Even if we download them after entering CAPTCHA, we cannot search for data in the file. Extraction is difficult. I have to work on the task once I get the English version. I cannot find my section (the…

The first ten days of November 2017 has seen a furious and unprecedented level of dialogue and mainstream-media conversation around the topic of air quality, specifically in and about the city of New Delhi. While the situation in the national capital is indeed dire, a large part of that conversation has been aided by citizens, journalists and community activism groups having access to scientifically validated real-time, hourly-updated data of the air quality levels in their neighborhoods and surrounding areas. The conversation around air quality levels for several years primarily involved scientists and researchers from leading Indian institutes and a few…

Traffic congestion, waste management, economic inequality -- issues such as these have been bogging down Indian cities. But attempting piecemeal, inefficient solutions means that problems have only worsened. The ‘Smart Cities Mission’ (SCM) launched by Narendra Modi's government in 2015 aimed at tackling urban issues. The concept was to make cities smart - to do more with less, to use existing resources efficiently and to build on them. As per the SCM, cities should provide citizens essential infrastructure, decent quality of life, sustainable environment, and also apply smart solutions. Given the lofty objective, it is interesting to observe how the…

Strengthening public healthcare is extremely crucial to providing quality healthcare for all. With that in mind, Chennai-based NGO Arappor Iyakkam initiated an initial study as a citizen audit of government hospitals and urban Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) in Chennai. While it cannot be taken as representative of the healthcare system of Tamil Nadu, the study is a good representation of the government-administered public healthcare system of Chennai. Arappor’s study in the hospitals and PHCs describes the gaps in the availability of basic facilities, such as drinking water, toilet and hospital cleanliness, hospital staff’s service and attitude, bribery, and overall experience…

The recent issues hitting headlines in Karnataka have already signaled the arrival of election season, with elections due in April-May 2018. Lingayats are demanding they be recognised as followers of a separate religion. Many activist organisations are demanding that the yellow-red Kannada flag be recognised as a flag for the state. The Congress government at the state has constituted committees to look at both the possibilities. In effect, every political party is trying to make the most of the sentiments of the public, to grab their emotions and convert it into votes. It appears that the election campaign has already…

I have recently finished the ward level analysis of Bengaluru’s 2017-18 budget, with Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy. The budget briefs will be available online this week, for all 198 BBMP notified wards in Bengaluru. I’m writing this to tell you how important the ward level budgeting is. The ward level analysis by Janaagraha informs people about the direct budget allocation for lakes, roads, parks, public toilets and other public services for each ward. Open access to a city’s budget offers significant benefits to its citizens by enabling them to: (i) know where their tax money is spent (ii)…

During the 2015 floods, civil rights and advocacy group Arappor Iyakkam had carried out relief work for the common man in an organized manner. Once the worst was over, they pondered whether it would be enough to just engage in relief work every single year when disaster strikes or more prudent to work to make sure that such an incident never ever occurs again. Translating thought to action, over 20 volunteers started ground work from March 2016 when they started the social audits on water bodies. A part of the waterbodies team concentrated on sewage issues and more specifically on…

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had two weeks ago published the list of autoblocks and waste management infrastructure data for each ward, on its website. Below is the index of the same data, grouped wardwise in an easy-to-see format on OpenCity.in Check your location in this Map and click on the link that has your ward's name and number, to see the data. Any problems in the data can be reported to the joint commissioner's office for your zone. This is first such effort in India, to bring about transparency in garbage management. You can check many issues with this data, Example:…