GENRE: Explainers

How often do we concern ourselves with electricity issues? Well, a social media listening exercise reveals that there is a buzz around electricity topics in Chennai when consumers are faced with either interruptions in power supply or unusually high electricity bill.  In the last one month, citizens in Chennai took to social media about 1,634 times to write about their concerns around power cuts and an inflated electricity bill from the TNEB! Nearly 70% of the users posted about how their EB bills shocked them. 63.2K users shared and interacted with posts about inflated electricity bills.  Source: Author’s analysis via…

Urban governance is a complex phenomenon. Apart from the local municipal body, a host of governmental organisations, parastatal bodies and state departments are entrusted with providing public services in Chennai. Their functions define the various aspects of life in the city. From water to power to housing, do you know who is accountable for the governance and delivery of basic services and amenities in Namma Chennai? This explainer talks of the various agencies involved in administration and public service delivery in Chennai. Municipal administration: The Greater Chennai Corporation Let’s start with the civic body. The Greater Chennai Corporation, housed in…

On 6th August, India gave Emergency Use Authorization for Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine, expanding its vaccine basket, which now has five vaccines — Covishield, Covaxin, Sputnik V, Moderna’s, and Johnson & Johnson’s vectored vaccine (JNJ-78436735 or Ad26.COV2.S ). One of the many new vaccines that India is waiting to introduce in its mammoth vaccination drive, this particular one was developed by Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Belgium-based division of the company, in collaboration with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Boston. The vaccine can be stored at normal temperature for three months, which makes it easily transportable to rural and…

The cash strapped Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been on a quest to improve its system, which will enable it to widen its property tax net. BBMP was one of the first municipal corporations in the country to embrace technology and implement an online Self Assessment Tax system. Whilst the effort has been in the right direction, it is however, constantly in the news, quite often for the wrong reasons. Now, even as it manages the brickbats and high praise, especially for its COVID management, BBMP has thrown a shocker to the public - a Property Tax Demand Notice…

Chennai can be called a groundwater city. Almost 60% of our daily needs is met from Chennai's groundwater sources, both at the macro and micro levels put together. This groundwater source can be sustained only by harvesting rain. Rain can be harvested in only two ways: Collecting rainwater in masonry/plastic tank for immediate use and/or Putting rainwater into the soil which is known as recharge. Chennai's groundwater bank Groundwater should be thought of as a bank. Extraction of groundwater should be compared to withdrawing money from the bank and recharge to be depositing money in the bank. Recharge is of…

Poor quality roads, with stretches of potholes and uneven patchwork are a common sight in Chennai. Newly-laid roads are often dug up by government agencies shortly after. As a result, complaints pertaining to fixing roads take longer than needed as authorities perpetually shift the blame to other departments. This stems from the fact that citizens are generally unaware of the technicalities involved in laying roads in Chennai. Here is an explainer on the kind of roads laid in Chennai, where to complain about them, how we can escalate matters and how citizens can keep a watch.   Chennai roads and the…

Within weeks of the terror attack on a Jammu air force base using drones, the Ministry of Civil Aviation, on July 15th, released a new set of Draft Drone Rules, 2021. While inviting public comments on the draft rules, the ministry said that the new rules are built on a premise of trust, self-certification and non-intrusive monitoring and will replace the existing Unmanned Aircraft Existing Rules, 2021, which had been released in March 2021. The ministry has been working towards developing a world class drone ecosystem in India. But formulating the rules took time as drone technologies have constantly been…

As the third COVID wave appears imminent in the country, robust communication strategies by government agencies become increasingly important. Public health messaging — in both form and content — is an extremely critical component of the response to a pandemic. Access to information about COVID guidelines, vaccination centres and helpline numbers posed a challenge during the first and second waves for a large section of the population, especially the digitally illiterate, marginalised and senior citizens. The avenues of information in the form of trusted media sources and bulletins from government websites seem to be unreachable for these categories. “Only a…

It's snake time of the year! Flower pots, piles of garden leaves, rubble heaps and discarded pipes are a few of the places where snakes feel safe. During the rainy season, they leave their often water-logged hideouts to get some warmth in the sun, which is why we're more likely to see them in our urban habitats at this time. We often see the staff of Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC) working in areas where snakes are known to be found, and this was something that had been bothering us for a while. Whether sweeping the streets, or clearing the weeds…

Thanks to the pandemic, traditional big fat Indian weddings have now become small, muted family events. As social distancing and restriction of movement became the norm in the COVID era, weddings changed too. Many couples have still gone ahead with their matrimonial plans over the past few months, and more plan to tie the knot in the weeks and months ahead but even they must adhere to the current COVID protocol for weddings as laid down by the states.  Even though lockdown norms have been eased in Chennai, things are not entirely back to the old normal. Citizens must be…