EDITORS' PICK

A once iconic bird in Bengaluru’s lakes is now a rare sight. Spot-billed pelicans, which are fish-eating water birds, were common, especially in large lakes across the city. Huge flocks of over a hundred birds would occupy lakes like Madiwala, Hebbal and Jakkur. But today, birdwatchers celebrate even sighting a handful of these birds. The decline in the city is linked closely to mass deaths of the species in their breeding sites in the Mysuru-Mandya region. But the exact reason is a mystery. Spot-billed pelicans or Pelicanus phillippensis are one of eight species of pelicans in the world and are…

Tayappa Dhangar, who is 41 and lives in Andheri, needs heart valve replacement surgery. He works as waste picker and is eligible for the indigent patient scheme under a charitable trust hospital. However, a well-known charitable trust hospital in South Mumbai has refused to perform the surgery free of cost.  The hospital provided a surgery cost estimate of around Rs 15 lakh, with assistance limited to only two lakh rupees. Tayappa, who earns a daily wage of Rs 300, does not know how to gather the remaining Rs 13 lakh for the surgery. Tayappa's situation is not unique. Many individuals…

Kochu Shankar, a resident of Banjara Layout in Horamavu, has not had to buy water from private tankers this year, unlike the majority of households in the layout. The rainwater harvesting (RWH) system at his home routes rainwater from the rooftop to the borewell, recharging it and ensuring a year-round water supply for the two-member family. Most residents in the layout have been buying water from private tankers over the past few months. Horamavu, part of the 110 villages added to Bengaluru city corporation limits in 2008, is not getting Kaveri water supply yet. Besides, with extensive digging of new…

At 51 years, N C Bhatra, a migrant labourer in Chennai, finds the 20-hour train journey to his hometown in Puri, Odisha, arduous and costly. So much so that he has limited his trips home to see his wife and two children to just one or two times a year. Bhatra had migrated from Puri to Chennai in 1996. Reserving a ticket in the sleeper coach was much easier then, he says. But over the past five years, he has never been able to book tickets directly as they get sold out much faster.  “To get a ticket nowadays, I…

Bengaluru Suburban Rail Project (BSRP) is the first project taken up under Government of India’s (GoI) new Suburban Rail Policy. From that angle, it is of national importance. How it pans out will have a bearing on future projects under this Policy. Therefore, Bengaluru cannot afford to fail itself and the country. Bengaluru Suburban Rail Project (BSRP) map. Pic: Rajkumar Dugar Background of the project After decades of discussions, on 21 October, 2020, BSRP was sanctioned to be built at a cost of Rs. 15,767 crores with four corridors crisscrossing Bengaluru over a total length of 148 kilometres. The Sanction…

As a wheelchair user, who likes to travel and go around the city, the biggest hurdle is navigating public spaces and using public transport to get around. As a member of the Disability Rights Alliance (DRA) in Chennai, I have taken part in accessibility audits and have been involved in different activities such as training wheelchair users for state and national-level competitions in a paralympic game called Boccia. Whenever we travel for all these activities, accessibility is the main challenge. Most of the public transport including buses and trains cannot be used by persons with physical disabilities, especially people who…

The desire of citizens for effective governance has enabled a stunning victory for the Congress, the current government in power. But are they in danger of losing the goodwill placed in them by the people?  For instance, the latest suggestion to allegedly ease the globally notorious traffic congestion in Bengaluru is to create double-decker flyovers along the proposed metro lines so that private vehicles go above the metro. If there is a metro along the route already, where is the need for a flyover above it? Is this not a reversal of the idea of elevated corridors, which was put on the back…

The elderly population in India is rapidly rising with those above 60 years of age set to constitute 15% of the population by 2036 (22.7 crore), according to the India Ageing Report-2023 released by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). From constituting about 10.5% (14.9 crore) of the population in 2022, the population of senior citizens is likely to increase to 20% in 2050 (34.7 crore), thus throwing up new challenges related to their safety, well-being and health. The report also stressed on the need to focus on policies and programmes to meet the needs of the elderly, especially older…

“The authorities told us to let them begin the construction work, and if we resist, they will do it by force,” says Dinesh Habale, a social worker and a tribal resident of Habal Pada, a village of over 65 families, near Film City in Aarey. The recent news of the approval for tunnel construction, with a final bid of Rs 6,301 crore for the Goregaon Mulund Link Road (GMLR) project, has left the tribal villagers of Habal Pada deeply uneasy. They dread the prospect of their ancestral homes being sacrificed for the construction of the upcoming tunnel project. As different…

"In our current challenging situation, we're taking life one day at a time," shares Kusum Bhagat, an elderly tribal woman residing in Devichapada, a village near Film City in Aarey. Kusum, currently recovering from blood cancer, finds herself in an ongoing battle to protect her family's ancestral farmland from being turned into a film set. She talks about the struggles of her family with tears in her eyes, while standing on guard next to the farmland, worrying if people from Film City will start the construction work. "We take turns standing guard, and I've been on duty since this afternoon.…