EDITORS' PICK

India has, over the years, seen several schemes that promised free or subsidised medicine. In 2008, the then UPA government proposed a Jan Aushadi scheme for nationwide subsidised supply of generic drugs. However, there were not many takers for the scheme at the time. While some chalked it up to poor supply chain management, others believe heavy pressure from the pharmaceutical industry was the reason the scheme failed to take off. Tamil Nadu had already established government stores in 1994 that provided certain drugs at reduced rates. But other states were slow to follow. Only some states like Rajasthan (2011)…

The recent spate of rains in Chennai has seen the city flooded in large parts. The current Chennai floods are all over social media now, stark in the photos of inundated streets and water logging in many homes, especially those on the ground floor. The chaos has evoked angry and anguished responses from residents. There has been a chorus of demands, asking why the city’s stormwater drain network was unable to handle the rains and how the city would hold up in the event of further downpours that are predicted. As part of a group of residents who suffered a…

Chennai saw record downpour over the weekend, with many parts receiving levels of rainfall not seen since 2015. Many parts of the city have been inundated after the heavy spell that followed the onset of the northeast monsoon. Water-logging has made roads dangerous and unnavigable in many parts of the city. Water entered homes and other buildings and residents in low-lying areas has to be evacuated on emergency as a result of the urban floods. As in many other Indian cities, in Chennai too, a wide range of issues are responsible for urban flooding. The host of problems at the…

On October 16th, close to 50 families residing on the pavements near the Egmore Railway Station were evacuated and shifted to a temporary shelter near Pattalam, by the Chennai Corporation and the city police. The pavement dwellers alleged that they were evicted without any prior notice and that they had been forcefully moved. Several activists in the city had condemned this incident and also questioned the need for such hurried eviction without any prior notice and in the absence of any kind of arrangements made to permanently house the people. The irony is that this incident took place exactly four…

[BBMP, in coordination with other government agencies, has initiated the K100 (Citizens’ Water Way) project to rejuvenate the stormwater drain network between Majestic and Bellandur lake. Mod Foundation, an urban action and research institute, has been working with these agencies to ensure the project’s goals are met, and is also facilitating the overall design concept. The author, who is part of the Mod Foundation, gives details of the project in this article.] There is growing awareness about the dire state of Bengaluru’s lakes, which has mobilised citizens, institutions and the government to take action. Storm water drains (SWDs) are a…

“I feel like I have gotten so used to all the issues with Chennai’s suburban rail that I don’t even feel like complaining about it anymore,” says Sivaraman, with a half hearted smile as he waits at the Thiruvanmiyur railway station in Chennai, to board the train to Chennai Beach station after a day’s work. When asked if he has ever tried lodging a complaint about all these 'issues' that he refers to, he said he has done so several times but no change has been made. However, the 54-year-old, who has been using the suburban rail in Chennai regularly…

The new set of Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Amendment Rules, 2021 released by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has raised a storm of protest from other ministries, e-commerce platforms and IT industry trade body Nasscom. Given the huge spurt in e-commerce transactions since the pandemic, especially in the supply of essential goods and services, the new rules aim to protect the interests of consumers using the various e-commerce platforms. India registered a growth in e-com transactions of 36% in 2020, amounting to approximately 80 billion dollars and still counting. The main issue is that e-commerce does not have…

63-year-old Punniadhas' mother passed away twenty six years ago in 1995 and his father passed away in 2009. Caught up in other immediate formalities and responsibilities at the time, Punniadhas, who is a resident of Chennai and an only child to his parents, managed to apply for their death certificates only in 2018 — over two decades after his mother's death and almost a decade after his father's. For Punniadhas, this delay in registration ended in a prolonged back and forth between the officials of the Greater Chennai Corporation and the police station of the locality where he resided. Despite…

In Part 1 of this series, we saw that pedestrians are at high risk on Bengaluru streets, especially groups like children and the elderly. In this part, we look at solutions to this problem. In the wake of COVID-19, Bengaluru, like many other cities worldwide, was put under a strict lockdown. During this time, as people stayed indoors and only left their homes to visit healthcare centers or to shop for essentials, they avoided long-distance travel. Hence hyper-local mobility increased; trips were made mostly on foot.  Car travel reduced drastically, and significant improvements were observed in traffic congestion, air quality…

For the residents of Delhi's many slums and jhuggi-jhopri clusters, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's recent statement that the government is working on a drainage master plan must have sounded a cruel joke. Especially at a time when Delhi had just had its wettest September since 1944. Till September 16th this year, Delhi witnessed 1159.4 mm of rainfall, the highest since 1964 and the third-highest ever, according to India Meteorological Department (IMD) data. Inevitably, the worst sufferers of this deluge were the 18.5% of the city’s population (estimated at 31,181,376 in the latest revision of the UN World Urbanization Prospects) living…