EDITORS' PICK

The Bengaluru Master Plan for 2031 promises to equip the city to deal with the challenges that will come its way by 2031 - principally more people, causing more demand for living space and transport. There are plans for development of new mass transport options like LRT (Light Rail Transit), BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) and Monorail along several major corridors alongside road and junction improvements.  But in this article, I want to step back from the issues concerning the city at large, and focus on the impact of the master plan on my own area of J.P. Nagar. The strange…

Every morning hundreds of tempo travellers traverse IT corridor routes including Outer Ring Road and Hosur Road in Bengaluru. On their way to picking up their customers’ employees, they also ferry commuters waiting on the way for public transport, illegally of course. It is no secret that there are many private buses too plying from K.R. Market or Anand Rao Circle, to the outskirts. Some of them have just a contract carriages license, and some service organisations. A colleague of mine reports college buses plying in the evening near Race Course Road, carrying regular passengers to pre-defined destinations within the…

If you have travelled a reasonable number of major cities in India, the first thing that will strike you about Bengaluru is its green cover. The trees that stand regally spreading their foliage on both sides of the road, creating cool, beautiful avenues for passers-by to enjoy. These trees shield us from the fury of the sun during the warm summer months, and bear beautiful flowers in springtime. The joy that comes from watching these flowers in full bloom is truly sublime. It can transport one from mundane surroundings to a veritable paradise. Trees soothe our senses and relieve stress.…

With rising concerns about air quality in the city, a number of private citizens have begun measuring pollutant levels in the atmosphere, and are publishing them. The Karnataka Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), which is tasked with monitoring air quality and protecting the public from the health risks of poor air, disputes these measurements, arguing that these are taken by un-certified sensors. That's true, but it's also not the end of the matter. The problem is quite simple - secrecy is the weakness of pollution control efforts in the country. The government has taken the view that it will collect its…

It is 4:15 a.m. and this is the scene at the gates of the Samta Nagar Post Office in Kandivali East, Mumbai. Men (mostly) just hanging around on the street, doing pretty much nothing. Chances are, they’ve done this before, but not early enough… the reason for this repeat visit. As I approach the group, Hukam Singh greets me. We were among the unlucky ones, not in the “first 20” of the previous morning. “Madam ka naam lick do bhai… athara” (write madam’s name brother… eighteen), said one. Yeah! I was in the first 20. This is probably the scene at…

How many of us remember our 10th and 12th board exam marks? Do they really matter now? Do we know how successful those rankers are, who ceremoniously gave interviews year after year, purporting to become world class doctors to serve the needy? If the parents of all kids, who are about to take the supposedly life-deciding board exams, pause for a second to ponder these questions, we can not only move away from rote learning towards nurturing a knowledge-driven society, but also perhaps ensure a happier, more holistic development of these young minds. Year after year, we focus on the number…

In the year 2017, data collected by Housing and Land Rights Network India (HLRN) reveals that government authorities, at both the central and state levels, demolished over 53,700 homes, thereby forcefully evicting, at a minimum, 260,000 (2.6 lakh) people across urban and rural India. The total number of persons affected has been calculated by multiplying the number of homes demolished by the average household size according to the Census (4.8). However, many demolished houses had more than one family, and most of the affected families have more than five persons. The real number of people displaced is therefore likely to…

Growing up in this beautiful city of gardens and lakes, one does wonder what happened to it over the past two decades. Any plans for the city’s future should carve a path of opportunities towards preserving what already works well, adding progressive and sustainable changes and allow the continuum of livability. The past couple of city development plans have been regressive and have lead this city towards a path of decay. This write up is a citizen’s analysis of what is proposed for a neighborhood (Planning District 07) in RMP 2031. Let’s start with some numbers. Land Use Planning District…

In Part 1 of this series, Citizen Matters had talked about carpooling startups in various cities and how people are availing these facilities. Despite the emergence of a number of players in the field, however, there are various challenges that these companies are grappling with. The biggest challenge carpooling entrepreneurs face is that the concept itself is not yet so popular in India. Concerns about privacy and security are common, so is the general feeling of discomfort in travelling in a stranger’s car. Hence a large part of these entrepreneur’s efforts are invested in popularising the concept and getting the support of…

Step into the lush green campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, and students pedaling away on their bicycles is a common sight. The eco-friendly mode of commute within the precincts of the campus received a special boost when the management of IIT Madras initiated a pilot project on bicycle sharing in December 2017. “For the last 3-4 years, several General Secretaries of the student bodies and Hostel Affairs Secretaries had included ‘cycle-sharing’ in their manifestos but had not been able to implement it. During this term, the Committee for Monitoring General Facilities For Students (CMGFS) jointly took…