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The parliamentary constituency of Jaipur votes on May 6th. Will the BJP MP be able to win his seat a second time, even after a strong anti-incumbency wave cost his party the Assembly elections last year? His main rival: former mayor and Jaipur’s first woman candidate in 48 years, fielded by the Congress.

Water, waste, traffic: A post-election chat with voters in Bhubaneswar, which went to polls on April 23rd, reveals that these nagging civic issues are what they expect their MP to take up and address!

For decades, waste has been Mumbai’s teeming, unsolvable problem. Slums around the city’s dumping ground are now Asia’s largest, exposing ragpickers and the general population to serious health risks. All plans and commitments to waste management, meanwhile, appear figurative.

Heard of Advanced Locality Management (ALM) in Mumbai? It is a programme under which citizens of a locality can get involved and work with the municipality to ensure resolution of civic issues. Can ALMs not work towards solving the city’s annual monsoon misery, one locality at a time?

Whenever we talk of environmental degradation, we tend to point fingers at nations and governments. But there’s a lot that every individual can do to save the planet, as a fellow citizen points out.

Solving many of our everyday civic issues does not involve rocket science; all it takes is for citizens and administration to work together, as the successful cleaning of this Gurgaon stormwater drain shows.

A journey to the heart of India and back leaves the writer distraught over the lack of civic awareness among educated, urban citizens and the implications for our much vaunted Clean India Mission.