GENRE: In Focus

For months now, various studies and reports have talked about the high level of water stress across Indian cities. The alarm bells reached a crescendo when Chennai ran out of water recently, and media ran multiple reports on India's looming urban water crisis. Many solutions have been proposed but the most fundamental—the need to price water as an economic good—is rarely investigated.  Water is invaluable; none of us can live without it. And so, historically, we've thought nothing about how we use it. Government after government, with a monopoly over the supply of water, has tried to control water supply.…

The Surat fire tragedy in a coaching centre which claimed the lives of 24 students has impacted coaching centres in Bhopal as well. A fire safety inspection ordered by Kalpana Srivastava, Divisional Commissioner, found that none of the coaching centres had even basic fire safety facilities. The four inspection teams found that in the 250 odd coaching centres in MP Nagar, the city’s busiest area where a majority of the coaching centres are housed, and other localities, many did not even have a fire extinguisher or a fire alarm system and were ill-equipped to deal with any unforeseen emergency fire…

Co-authored by Dattatraya T Devare and Saurabh Ketkar There’s a saying by Gustavo Petra, Former Mayor of Bogota, Columbia that is often seen on social media posters and discussions on mobility. Petra says, and rightly so, “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, It’s where the rich use public transportation.” Perhaps the most critical element of any major city is its public transportation network. It is akin to the veins and arteries in our bodies, taking people from their homes to their destinations, to help the city build and grow. Without this crucial link, an…

Mahalakshmi street at T Nagar. Harrington Road in Chetpet. Station Border Road at Chrompet. The story is similar in all these localities. Once serene residential neighbourhoods, they now host a number of commercial and institutional establishments.  Let’s take the case of Mahalakshmi Street in T Nagar. A private bank is being operated from this primarily residential locality, which has no infrastructural support for commercial establishments. There is no designated parking space. Residents came to know about the bank only when it was being constructed.  It is not the conversion alone that is attracting eyeballs, but also the fact that residents,…

Six-year-old Bittu, a resident of By Lane 3 of Nabin Nagar in Guwahati, misses school frequently during the peak monsoon season. “My younger son Bittu recently suffered serious skin ailments after he got wet in the rains,” explained his mother Purnima Das, “When I took him to a neighbouring clinic, it was diagnosed that he was suffering from a kind of superficial fungal infection. The consulting doctor advised me not to let him come in touch with clogged rainwater. But our lane gets flooded every time there is a downpour. Hence, I do not let Bittu go to school during…

It will perhaps be a long time before Chennai can witness any spell of heavy rain without getting jitters over the nightmarish memory of December 2015. The 2015 floods that devastated the city exposed the state of urban planning in the city. The lack of resilience to natural disasters remains one of the greatest concerns of the people of one of India’s largest cities.  What should be noted is that certain parts of Chennai experienced greater flooding than others and this impacted rescue and relief efforts. Poor urban planning, coupled with an expanding population that requires more space, leads to…

As this article gets ready for publication, we already know of 24 fatalities caused by relentless rainfall and flash floods in Himachal Pradesh and other parts of north India. Several deaths have been reported from the capital Shimla itself, while hundreds remain stranded in various other parts of the Himalayan state. However, this is not the first extreme weather event to befall the region in recent times, nor, unfortunately, does there seem to be much hope of such disasters being stemmed. Will the allocation of some extra funds in the name of green bonus and the setting up of a…

Co-authored by Dattatraya T Devare and Saurabh Ketkar It is not news that urban Indian roads are a nightmare, and Bangalore is perhaps in the contention for winning the award for the worst traffic scenario. But one needs to dig deeper to find the root of the problem. Our streets are extremely unequal, in more ways than one. The streets of our city are perhaps the most democratic of spaces we can envision. Protests against governments, demands of minority groups, gay pride parades all find expression on the streets. It is the one space that every citizen can share with…

Picture a Chennai where buses are the fastest and most regular means of transport for short distances. Where bus stops are seamlessly aligned and you won't ever have to run after a bus that has overshot its designated stop or has come to a halt a good few metres before the stop. You don't ever have to haggle with the conductor over small change, because you can purchase your ticket prior to boarding. Wouldn't you automatically opt for a bus in such a scenario, instead of stressing yourself out at the driver's wheel in the midst of crazy traffic? Well,…

Melissa Arulappan recently counted 13 bikers driving on the wrong side on a one-way street, all within two seconds. This is not a one-off incident. Citizens across Bengaluru have been noticing an increasing number of such violations in the recent past. What’s going on? In 2019, just till July, the Bengaluru Traffic Police booked over 1.3 lakh cases for not following lane discipline, 2.4 lakh cases for violating 'no entry', and 36,579 for reckless driving. In the same period, there were 2713 road accidents in the city that killed 445 people in all. Given over 13,600 kilometres of main roads…