GENRE: Features

It all started with a nine-kilometre ride three years ago. Soon cycling enthusiast Felix John started pedalling long distances, with his recent record being a 1200-km ride to Coimbatore. And now, he is Chennai’s Bicycle Mayor, appointed by BYCS – an Amsterdam-based social enterprise. His responsibilities as a bicycle mayor are many and diverse: to increase cycling in the city and to bridge the gap between cyclists and local government, among several others. In an interview with Citizen Matters, Felix John, who takes pride in hailing from North Chennai, talks about the ambitions, feasibility and challenges of promoting cycling in…

A city that once looked like a picture postcard, with glassy lake and chinars, today seems to have become an extended army camp. Srinagar, the capital of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, conjures up the image of a remote world under siege. A 11-member fact-finding team of advocates, trade union human activists and a psychiatrist recently released a report titled 'Imprisoned Resistance' after a visit to the strife-torn state from September 28th to October 4th. Denying the Centre's clamorous claims of "normalcy" in the region, the team divulges that the people have reacted with their own hartal. As…

A study by Toxics Link, a Delhi-based environmental research and advocacy non-profit identified 15 e-waste processing hotspots in Delhi operating with impunity without safeguards. These hotspots house over 5,000 illegal e-waste processing units directly and indirectly, employing over 50,000 people. The sheer scale of the violation of environmental norms highlights the failure of the system, especially of the E-waste (Management) Rules 2016. The study states that many authorised dismantlers and recyclers are selling waste to the informal sector, in complete contravention of the law. The CPCB website currently does not provide their list of authorized vendors as mandated by the…

Introducing our new series with Raaghav Ranganathan that deals with common problems faced by citizens and ways to solve them. Each video will address a frequently faced issue and provide step by step solutions to address them. How to file a consumer complaint Have you ever been sold a faulty or broken product? How has your experience been in trying to get a refund? Have you had to approach the consumer court to address your grievance? For many consumers, being saddled with a bad product and cursing their luck is the end of the road. But there are ways to…

Television channels and newspapers could not stop talking about Kashmir. Every news bulletin, every panel discussion, every TV debate was about Kashmir and its people. Yet, what media did not, or could not, cover was the everyday ordeal in a city of close to two million, where municipal workers had not been able to report to duty for 10 days. Srinagar was stinking. All normal operations were suspended in Srinagar from August 5th, following abrogation of Article 370. Within a few days, residents started to complain of chest discomfort, frequent sneezing, mild cough and allergies due to the foul smell…

It has suffered decades of neglect: languishing in dilapidated condition for years and later ravaged by fire. But, Humayun Mahal in Chepauk, the world’s first-ever building constructed in the Indo-Saracenic style of architecture, is now slated for a new lease of life.  The long, creaking sound of walls being drilled into echo across the construction site on a mid-October Friday morning. Scraping the plastering off a wall in the interior of the building, B Raju, a 49-year-old worker wipes the sweat off his face. “We are following the same traditional methods followed to construct the building over 240 years ago,”…

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.” This quote from Russian-American author and philosopher Ayn Rand’s bestseller, The Fountainhead, aptly describes everything that happened at Rabindra Sarovar since early morning on November 2nd well into the following day, as an order from the country’s green court -- the National Green Tribunal (NGT) – was brazenly flouted to allow the conduct of Chhat Puja in the Sarovar premises. An earlier story on Citizen Matters had detailed all the precautions and steps that had been taken to protect the national lake from toxic…

Rapid urbanisation in India has claimed one major casualty – destruction of existing green cover in cities to make way for development and other projects. But with the growing realisation that a good quality of life means not just conserving, but also adding to the city’s green cover, and citizens pushing for the same, urban authorities in Ahmedabad, as in some other cities, are experimenting with ways of creating small green areas in an ever-expanding concrete urban landscape. One method, much touted of late, is that of Miyawaki forests. Developed by Japanese botanist and plant ecologist Akira Miyawaki, and named…

The story of Ennore is neither new nor untold. However, there is a need to retell it, only because justice seems to be slipping further and further away. The dual onslaught of unplanned industrialisation and deforestation has taken away an important constitutional right from Ennore residents -- the right to life.  Both public and private sector industries have been drastically exploiting the natural resources of Ennore since 1993. Who suffers the consequences? The residents in eight villages of Ennore, for whom clean air and unpolluted water has become an unattainable luxury.  As the locality suffers the consequences of industrialisation in…

On a scalding hot afternoon, a petite, dainty woman stands at a small shop in R A Puram, counting the change she has to return to her customers. Her bangles clink as she swiftly wraps some eggs and then hands it over to the customer along with the change. With her saree pallu tied at her hip, she toils to the sound made by the jangling of her armlets. “I had sold bangles like these to buy this shop. They were made of gold. It has been 10 years now, but I don’t regret it,” says Ponnarasi, recalling times past.…