EDITORS' PICK

My team and I had the first detailed meeting with our local NGO partners from GB road, an infamous red light district of Delhi, in the summer of 2016. It was at the very outset that they warned us that the intended beneficiaries of our scheduled project, which aimed to provide quality eye care at their doorstep, were likely to have reservations about interacting with us, ‘outsiders.’ These were the sex workers and their families residing in the brothels of GB Road. Our partners, Lalitha Nayak (from SPID org), a very experienced educator and social worker and Geetanjali Babbar and…

This article is supported by SVP Cities of India Fellowship. Feeding a city like Bengaluru, that has 1.25 crore people is a huge challenge, and provides millions of business opportunities as well. The vegetables and fruits grocery business is a major part of this industry. It requires a solid supply chain to supply fruits and vegetables to the city from the surrounding areas and beyond, as they are perishable. There are thousands of vendors selling vegetables across Bengaluru, who set up shop on pavements or small stalls, or use a push cart. For these two couples living in Kammanahalli, the…

15-year-old C Aarthi (name changed) is known as a brave and straightforward girl in Kannagi Nagar of Chennai. Her constant smile speaks of a cordial and open personality. But, ask her about the problems in notorious Kannagi Nagar where instances of prostitution and child marriages are common, and she keeps mum. However, two postgraduate students of the Social Work (aided) Department at Madras Christian College took a different route. B Swetha and C Sowmiya, who were placed in the Centre for Women’s Development and Research, tried a creative approach: Art therapy. Girl children from Kannagi Nagar between eight and 15…

It was a novel idea of providing services to students in the comfort of their homes: Apply for the BMTC bus pass online and have it delivered to you at home. However, the new service has run into rough weather as close to 70,000 bus pass applications remained unprocessed, forcing the students to turn up in large numbers at the KempeGowda  Terminal to collect their passes. With September 30th being the last day to avail these concession passes, and many unable to apply for it online because of glitches in procedure, many students queued up at the BMTC depot to…

October 2. Apart from being Gandhi Jayanthi, this is also one of the days on which Grama Sabha takes place in the state. Grama Sabha, in which all the voters of a village meet, takes place four times a year (on Jan 6, May 1, Aug 15 and Oct 2), and offers a forum for villagers to raise their voices on matters of village governance in the presence of its representatives and officials from the administration. It is an avenue for community participation in governance, a step towards Gandhi’s vision of Gram Swaraj (Village self-rule). Now, take a step closer home,…

There's a lot of talk about Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation's efficiency, price increase and making data-based decisions. People are asking the BMTC to stop fare hike. Before getting emotional about it all, let us go through the following points. Do we want to run BMTC as public sector transport organisation generating profit/Return on Investment (ROI) and to grow the network specifically focused on profits? Do we want to run BMTC as an employment-oriented social responsibility organisation to the public at large irrespective of its income/expenditure status? Do we want to run BMTC as a social responsibility for every citizen (Indian…

Dear Chennai politicians, I have a bone to pick. You ruined my Sunday. A Sunday which I was looking forward to. A Sunday which I had marked on the calendar, to meet an old friend who had come to town. My friend was staying in North Chennai and I, in the South and I was looking forward to a peaceful, traffic free ride through the city I proudly call home. All that and more changed the very instant I left home. The moment I stepped out and shifted gears, I was in for a harrowing experience. The whole city looked…

It has been six years since Bengaluru’s waste management mess was brought to the notice of the High Court of Karnataka through a Public Interest Litigation, by Kavitha Shankar and the Solid Waste Management Round Table team. While the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has undertaken many measures to help manage waste better, there is lots more that remains to be done. When the PIL began in 2012, the city of Bengaluru was producing about 3,500 tonnes of waste per day, with no waste segregation in place and all waste going to landfill. All mixed garbage from the city was…

The steady, low hum of buses leaving the city punctuates the night at Koyambedu, a commercial hub in Chennai. A few shops remain open for the odd patron while others are firmly shut. Under the golden yellow of the street lights, a rhythmic swoosh of bamboo against tar grows in the dark. Three women, bent at work, are leaving a pristine path in their wake, a trail they have cleaned for the last seven years. Armed with a rickety tricycle, an old aluminium basket, two brooms and reflector vests, this motley crew makes singara Chennai. The women work meticulously, one…

In March 2009, the Rajasthan government approached the erstwhile union government, seeking central assistance for setting up the Jaipur Metro Project. Nine years later, a performance audit of the first phase of Jaipur Metro by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) reveals how this urban mobility project was pushed through with undue haste. This has raised questions over why certain due diligence protocols in the planning phase were undermined. The CAG performance audit tells us that in April 2009, the Union Government advised the Rajasthan government to prepare a Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP) in order to conduct a…