EDITORS' PICK

Many of us city folks are growing veggies on our terraces and balconies, greening our patch of concrete, staying as eco-positive as we can, but wait a moment… Are we really being gentle on the earth, all the way? Where did it come from – the red soil and the river sand that we use to grow our potted plants? The fact is, the soil and sand would have been mined or smuggled out from a rice field, river bed, forest or countryside, leaving them that much depleted. We do know that sand mining from river beds devastates not just…

I used public transport for the first time in the city this July, as I had to travel to Kempegowda Bus Station (Majestic BMTC City Bus Depot). As a complete newbie bus commuter in Bengaluru, I had an internship assignment to look at BMTC’s communication, and their interfaces and evaluate the overall usefulness. My mentor, from Co Media Lab, had suggested I use all mediums of communication available to me whether it be the BMTC app, Google Maps, or even physical brochures. A new perspective, he said, probably had a better chance of picking out certain gaps in the system,…

Election Commission of India (ECI) approved a proposal of a programme for Special Summary Revision of Electoral Rolls, by the Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka (CEO-KA). Of the nine listed activities in the letter, we the citizens should note the following: 1. House to house visit by BLOs 16 Jul to 10 Aug 2018 2. Rationalisation of Polling Stations 27 Aug to 15 Sep 2018 3. Publication of integrated electoral rolls 10 Oct 2018 4. Period for claims and objections 10 Oct to 20 Nov 2018 5. Disposal of claims and objections by 20 Dec 2018 6. Final publication of electoral…

Built in the 13th century, Delhi’s Qutb Minar, a UNESCO world heritage site and one of the tallest minarets in the country, is facing stiff competition − from the height of a garbage dump in the national capital. In a recent report, a panel of India’s Parliament noted their observations on landfill sites in Delhi, writing that the “laissez-faire of the civic bodies of Delhi also gets reflected in the fact that the height of Ghazipur landfill site has reached as high as 65 metres which is just eight metres less than the height of the national monument Qutub Minar”. Ghazipur is…

Tamil Nadu has been a frontrunner in organ donation. Call it the collective effort between hospitals and not-for-profit organisations or the willingness of people, the state has the highest number of organ donors in India. The fact remains though that a majority of citizens are still ignorant about many aspects of donation, leaving a wide gap between organ availability and patients waiting for transplants. The NDTV-Fortis More To Give campaign indicated that an approximate 5 lakh people across the nation die each year, due to non availability of organs. The number reiterates the need to acknowledge citizens who are hesitant…

It is a pretty linear argument as far traffic solutions go. The big bad car versus pedestrians and cyclists. Non-motorized transport (NMT) versus motorised private transport. If we want to get out of this nightmare we call traffic jams and decongest the city, we need to get people out of their private vehicles and have them take to mass transit and non-motorised transport options i.e. walking and cycling, in a big way. Sounds pretty simple in theory, and this is expected to be the linchpin that will not only decide the which way urban mobility is headed, but also decide the survival…

9.45 acres. Three officials in charge and at least 1.5 lakh rupees of public money spent every month on this near-defunct institution. These details pertain to the only government beggar rehabilitation centre located at Melpakkam near Avadi that has had no inmates for more than three years now. There are three permanent officers who live at the Centre itself, besides 14 officers who work on deputation basis. Even if we ignore the salaries of deputed officers for the time being, who also work in leprosy homes in Tamil Nadu, the three officers are paid between 40,000 to 70,000 every month, as shared…

This article is supported by SVP Cities of India Fellowship “I wanted a job that would pay me well. But more importantly there needed to be some ‘prestige’ attached to it.” says 20 year-old Sathish. His father Pothalu has worked as a pourakarmika for the last 27 years. Sathish grew up watching his father sweeping the streets of Basavangudi. There are countless like Sathish, who come from underprivileged backgrounds, looking for jobs. These youngsters' ambitions face a lot of hurdles - limited opportunities, access to quality education and financial challenges in their homes.  Most of their parents work in the…

Sixteen years after the Karnataka High Court ordered the closure of all abattoirs within Bengaluru city limits and instructed the state government and the municipal authority to construct alternative facilities on the outskirts of the city, the first steps in that direction are visible. According to Dr K P Ramesh, official working at the Animal Husbandry Department in the Bangalore Bruhat Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), a new abattoir is being built on a 40-acre site within the KSIDC industrial estate at Harohalli, 34 km from the city and is expected to be commissioned by mid-2019. Not only this, concrete steps are…

It has been close to a month since R Gopinath, a Class 8 student from the Corporation Higher Secondary School in Koyambedu returned from Washington D.C. but his face brightens up still as he speaks of his experience. Gopinath was one of the students selected by the Rotary Club, with which the US Consulate had tied up for this initiative, a branch of their two-year English Access Microscholarship programme. Eight students from Chennai’s Corporation schools were chosen for a trip to Washington D.C., based on an evaluation of their creativity and logical reasoning skills. Before taking the trip, the students…