EDITORS' PICK

On a balmy evening in Chennai, Shruti was in for a rude shock as she entered her room in her fifth-floor apartment in Nesappakkam. A pigeon had made its way into the room through an open window. Over the next few hours, Shruti managed to get the bird to exit her room with much difficulty.  This incident resulted in her opting to protect her balcony and windows with a net to prevent pigeons from entering her home again. Feral pigeons have made their homes in Chennai, in the crevices, ledges, parapets and every other space they can find in buildings.…

In a city that suffers a relentless monsoon with lightless damp days followed by a fleeting winter which is now marked by grey smog, spring is precious. And spring too is fleeting.  Avenue trees all across the city begin to jewel themselves in a new flush of leaves; coppers, maroons and fluorescent greens. And soon after, the flowers follow;  yellows, reds and purples. With bees buzzing on the crowns of flowering trees and birdsong cutting through the ever present traffic soundscape of the city. Spring in Mumbai is an act of resistance. Overworked, under-rested and always in a hurry, the…

Indian cities have long suffered the absence of coherent and consistent policy-making on urbanisation. As a result, they are plagued by governance deficits, inadequate infrastructure, poor land management, unequal access to clean drinking water, repeated bouts of flooding, severe densification of some areas and poor quality of air and public spaces.  For Devashish Dhar, a former public policy specialist at NITI Aayog, these are evidence of Indian cities being a blind spot in planning and policy. In India's Blind Spot: Understanding and Managing Our Cities (Harper Collins India, 2023), Dhar examines historical processes that led to haphazard development of Indian…

The Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) recently decided upon two projects that raise questions about its intentions. It rejected the proposal to build a school by Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) citing Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) rules but approved the proposal for a Golf Course by Mistry Construction Co Pvt Ltd within a day of receiving it. The Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority, regulates all developmental activities in Coastal Regulation Zones. It does so for “protecting and improving the quality of the coastal environment and preventing, abating and controlling environmental pollution in the Coastal Regulation Zone areas in the…

“Trams still run on 40 routes in Melbourne with millions of users,” says former tram conductor Roberto D'Andrea, who along with his fellow conductor Tony Graham travelled from Melbourne to Calcutta in February to promote the five-day Tramjatra festival. “It is not merely a heritage ride but used daily by commuters as part of the public transit system”. Calcutta is no Melbourne. But it can boast of two firsts: The first Indian city to build a metro line. And the only city to still have functional tram lines. The Calcutta metro of course gets all the attention and money. The…

Can you plan a trip to Iceland for me? Can you plan a vegetarian meal for a dinner party at my house tonight? How can I productively engage my six-year-old who likes art and craft. Can you explain to me Einstein’s theory of relativity? In the real world, no one person can answer such a diverse set of questions? But in the cyberworld, there is a new entity which can. It goes by the unusual name of Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer or ChatGPT with its unique ability to generate human like responses in record time. This new entity, unveiled in…

On February 7, 2023, 30 fishermen from Uran Koliwada were arrested for opposing work on the Uran bypass bridge. The grounds for the FIR against them was that the accused were causing "danger to the nation," as the project is of "national importance." While they were given bail, the arrests are emblematic of fisherfolk's fight to oppose the rampant and widespread destruction of their fishing areas by development far and wide. Fishermen from Uran Koliwada have been protesting against various projects carried out by Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO), Navi Mumbai Special…

Books connect readers to voices from the past, from alternative universes, from lives of people we don’t know. Books transport us to unknown worlds, while simultaneously revealing and helping us interpret the realities of our own. Books transform, by making us think, wonder and find our own voices. Public libraries, therefore, can be the centre of such transformation — for both individuals and communities.   Libraries, however, can be more than a repository of books.  During the pandemic and subsequent lock down, community-run free libraries in India educated its members on social distancing and masking, helped them book vaccination appointments, filled…

As with Joshimath, the ecological crisis threatening an already sinking Shimla and other hill towns in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh was long foreseen and predicted. Prof A K Mahajan, a geologist at Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Shahpur (Kangra) undertook a scientific study in 1998 on the twin-towns of Dharamshala and McLeodganj. “There is high similarity in the land subsistence crisis at Joshimath and McLeodganj town,” says Professor Mahajan. “Since 1998, I have been repeatedly highlighting the warning signals relating to the sinking threat at McLeodganj. Recently, when a road, ‘Khara Danda’ connecting Dharamshala with  Mcleodganj started sinking, it was a…

When someone sees him for the first time, the most striking feature will have to be his quirky spectacle frame – square on his left eye, and round on the other. Narresh is the co-founder and creative director of Shivan & Narresh, India's first luxury holiday brand that was launched in Cannes with 100% stitch-free swim line. He has been featured in every major luxury fashion magazine and portal. Whether this was a future he had envisioned years back, when he was preparing for his final school board examinations, is difficult to say. But in a way the genesis of…