EDITORS' PICK

A population census is still far away. But the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) plans to do a dog census in Mumbai in March 2022. For a start, the BMC is doing an awareness drive towards responsible pet ownership in Mumbai by getting owners to license their pets. “As part of this campaign, BMC officials visited housing societies to create awareness and register more pet licences,” said Dr K.A. Pathan, general manager of BMC’s veterinary health department. “Since the process is entirely online and can be done over a mobile phone, our staffers would register the pets on the spot, and…

It has never been easier for political parties to know what their cities need. On December 22nd, the NGOs Praja Foundation and Mumbai First released the ‘Ideal Public Health Manifesto’. Handpicking 10 areas of priority within the BMC’s public health department, the manifesto is making a case for reforms that could mean better healthcare for all. Elections for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are expected to be held in February 2022, and the city awaits an influx of manifestos where health will compete with concerns of road, water, and environment, among others. Instead of the freebies political parties usually offer,…

This is the first of a two part story on the Delhi government’s initiative in introducing Entrepreneurship Mindset Classes for school students of classes 11-12 Between June and December, when a satellite TV channel first aired its promo for the Indian version of the popular American entrepreneur reality show Shark Tank,  scores of class 11 and 12 students from Delhi government schools had pitched to “sharks” business ideas they had executed and discussed investments needed to scale up their enterprises. Many came out with flying colours in interviews that were no less gruelling than those faced by candidates who made it…

On 8th July 2021, a Chennai-based construction and real estate firm obtained the completion certificate from the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) for its newly-constructed residential building, located in Valmiki Street of East Tambaram. The building consists of a stilt floor plus five floors and houses 15 dwelling units. Along with amenities such as rainwater harvesting structures and fire licences, the building had also declared a functional rooftop solar installation in order to obtain the completion certificate, which is a prerequisite for all builders to obtain water, sewer and power connections.  As per the Tamil Nadu Combined Development and Building…

On January 6th, the state of Tamil Nadu recorded a total of 6,983 new positive cases of COVID-19. Out of these, 3,759 cases, which is around 54%, were recorded in the state capital of Chennai, which has been contributing to the most number of COVID cases in the state, followed by the districts of Chengalpattu and Coimbatore. Expectedly, people are now questioning whether we are now in the middle of the third COVID wave that the city had been fearing. Just about a month ago, on December 6 2021, Chennai recorded just 128 new positive cases, with the total number of…

In 2022, as many as 132 cities that are currently implementing clean air action plans under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), will have only two years left to meet the 2024 target of 20-30% cut in annual average particulate pollution from 2017 levels. While these generic targets are common for all cities, the city-wise target for meeting the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for both particulate matter of size less than 10 micron and 2.5 micron (PM10 and PM2.5) are significantly tighter for some. Especially those in the Indo Gangetic Plain, where the reduction needed is 50-60% or more.…

I remember being on the school bus, on the way to school and looking out the window on the final stretch to see a large and empty ground. I did not concern myself with its origin, assuming that it was a wasteland. Then, one day, I noticed some activity taking place on this wasteland. I could not make out what was happening. Till one day, a great change took place: the land was suddenly blue with water! This ‘great change’ did not take place in a day, of course; the project that transformed the land and restored the original water…

2022 was expected to be a year of hope. A year when the COVID pandemic that had killed millions and wrecked economies around the world, would come to an end. But then arrived Omicron, a heavily mutated new variant. First detected in South Africa in November, it triggered a new wave of COVID-19 in Africa, Europe, and America. And in India, as the new year dawned, cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta, Bengaluru, and Delhi started seeing ever-increasing single-day spikes in COVID cases in nearly seven months. There were also wide variations in Test Positivity Rates (TPR) across the country likely caused…

An independent project monitoring wastewater in 46 locations in Bengaluru has interesting data that could potentially work as a city-wide early warning system for COVID-19 outbreaks. The platform called Precision Health has been actively collecting and analysing wastewater samples from Bengaluru since April 2021 to detect and monitor the presence of SARS-CoV-2.  The data from Precision Health mirrors the peak of the second wave in May, and the recent uptick in cases, in terms of the percentage of samples that were positive for SARS-CoV-2. The current findings from wastewater testing show that at the ward level, around half the wards…

“Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat them”. So wrote Winston Churchill. A chillingly apt truth those in charge of urban governance in India need to learn today. Many lessons of 2020 — public health and livelihoods to name two — went unlearnt. The same lessons and some new ones came to the fore in 2021, especially the images of people running helter-skelter and paying exorbitant prices for that precious cylinder of life-giving oxygen as wave two of COVID ran amok. For me, the sight of students slowly trooping back to schools and colleges was among the…