GENRE: Explainers

Bangalore One (B1), a Karnataka government's e-governance initiative, has been serving citizens since 2005. This ‘One-stop-shop' facility that is open 24x7 (mini centres are open from 8 AM to 8 PM) aims to redefine public service under one roof. Here's a round up of available services at the B1 centres. Services offered by Bangalore One (pic: Vaishnavi Vittal) These centres allow you to pay your BSNL telephone billsas well as Spice, Airtel, Tata Indicom, Cell One and Reliance phone bills. Bills can be paid through cash, cheque or DD. You can also pay your water bills to BWSSB and electricity…

Residents living in select premium housing segments in the city - including Palm Meadows on the Marathahalli-Whitefield Road and Chaithanya Samarpan on the Whitefield-Hoskote Road have been receiving undervaluation notices from the sub-registrar's office. What are undervaluation notices? Who sends them out and on what grounds? What should home owners do when they receive such notices? Citizen Matters tried to find the answers. The Chaithanya Samarpan gated community on the Whitefield-Hoskote Road, is a 5-minute drive from the Whitefield Railway Station. (Pic: Savita Kini) The District Registrar of Stamps, under Section 45-A of the Karnataka Stamp Act 1957, is entitled…

To find your name in the voter rollCheck the Chief Electoral Officer's site and search for your name in final electoral rolls for the upcoming elections. » Find your name in the Bangalore electoral rolls for Lok Sabha elections 2009. Try various spellings for your name. Try searching by assembly constituency or by pincode. The results show the your name, part no, serial no and age.Other sites like One Billion Votes and Google Lok Sabha Elections portal are also providing search feature. (Note we have not verified the accuracy of their information) You can also see the final rolls (pdf…

Here are the steps on how to enroll... Which form?FORM 6: For inclusion of names on the voter's list, for inclusion of missing names and transposition of names from the previous to the present constituency (enclose copy of address proof and age proof if you are enrolling for the first time).FORM 7: For deleting or objecting to the non-resident and deceased persons’ names from the list.FORM 8: For making corrections to the particulars of oneself on the list.FORM 8A: For transposition of entry from one part of the roll to another part in the same constituency.Vote De! India, a non-profit…

Area Residential rates (All numbers in Rs Sq/ft) Commercial rates(All numbers in Rs Sq/ft) BLR - Central business Districts MG Road   20000 Kasturba Rd   15000 Cubbon Rd 12500  Church Street 12500 15000 Dickenson Rd   12500 Ashokanagar 2500 5000 Victoria Layout 4000 8000 Commercial Street   25000 Infantry Rd 10000 15000 K Kamraj Rd   5000-8000 Shivajinagar 2500 5000 Cunningham Rd 10000 15000 Queens Rd 5000 10000 Millers Rd 6000 10000 Vasantnagar 7000 10000 Surrounding MG RD Langford Town 6000 8000 Richmond Town 6000 8000 Residency Rd   15000 St.Marks Rd 10000 15000 Cambridge Rd 5000 7000 Ulsoor…

We all often read in newspapers about various raids that the Lokayukta of Karnataka does on various officers and catches them red-handed taking bribes. And most of us wonder how do they get to know of this. If one of us comes across an officer who readily accepts bribes, how do we tell the Lokayukata about that? Where do we complain? Will the Lokayukta consider the small complaints that do not involve a one crore-rupees scam?Well, the answer is yes. And filing a complaint is not as daunting as it may seem, considering our collective experience of access to government…

In the earlier parts of this series we have seen as to how in a layout context, the Resident Welfare Association (RWA) is the body that is aware of the issues that the residents face, can engage with the residents to identify appropriate solutions, can build consensus on issues/resolutions and enable the implementation of measures to ensure issue resolution. We have also discussed the relevance of Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) in the layout context, and dealt with FAQ’s on the same. In this article we will see how the RWA can play the role of a 'Resource Manager' for water, assuming…

The first two parts of this series dealt with arriving at a broad layout-level strategy for rainwater harvesting (RWH) and how to engage the residents and decision-making bodies of the layout to move the strategy forward. When engaging with residents, one will inevitably face many questions about why people should consider rainwater harvesting (RWH), how the systems are constructed and how they work. The following discussion concentrates on how to address these FAQs, first focusing on general RWH questions and then on more technical questions related to RWH for direct storage and groundwater recharge. Rainwater Clubrainwaterclub [at] gmail [dot] com1022,…

In Part 1 of this series, we touched on the crucial first steps to implementing rainwater harvesting (RWH) in a layout - asking yourself why the layout should implement RWH, what implementation strategies make sense in your layout, and consulting with someone with RWH technical capacity to assist with conception, design and implementation. This part focuses on the human dimension of implementing RWH at a collective level. As we saw in Part 1, the two RWH implementation strategies for a layout are household collection for domestic use, and collection from households and common areas for groundwater recharge. To implement either…

Step 2 – What should be the RWH strategy for your layout Another factor to consider when determining the best RWH interventions for your context is your layout’s land use pattern. In a typical urban residential layout, land use is usually as follows: approximately 60% is rooftops, 20% is roads and the rest is open-areas like parks, playgrounds, footpaths, transformer yards or drains. This means that the largest amount of rain is falling on rooftops. Rooftops are also clean and so rainwater running off of them is clean. It is prudent to try and capture this at the household level…