GENRE: In Focus

Kasa - Rasa center. Pic: Pinky Chandran "There was a time when I didn't have enough food to eat. Now I am so busy that I don't have enough time for food," says Krishna, once a waste picker, now runs  Domlur Dry Waste Collection Center Ward no 112, and employs six people. Krishna is one of the many informal waste sector workers that run the Dry Waste Collection Centers (DWCC) in Bengaluru. DWCCs were set up following a Lok Adalat’s intervention directing the Municipality to set up these centers to enable ward level recycling in 2010. The Karnataka High Court…

People find it easy and cheap to use plastic carry bags. Pic: Shree D N Smitha is a homemaker in Malleshwaram, Bengaluru. Every time her husband gets vegetables from the market in lightweight white plastic carry bag, she saves it carefully. Everyday she puts one such plastic carry bag into the wastebin in her kitchen. She ties the carry bag with the wet and dry waste neatly and puts it for disposal everyday, for the BBMP garbage auto to take it away. Smitha doesn’t care about what happens to this carry bag later—that it might end up in an animal’s stomach…

Many of you may be interested in building your home on a plot owned by you. There are hundreds of private layout developers in all parts of Bengaluru, advertising all over newspapers and television. Private layouts are being developed along all the main roads from Bengaluru towards Devanahalli airport, Hoskote, Whitefield, Sarjapur, Attibele, Anekal, Jigani, Kanakapura, Mysore, Magadi, Tumkur and Nelamangala. Some of these projects are at a distance of nearly 50 kms from Vidhana Soudha. All layout developments have to fulfil legal requirements of the Land Revenue Act, the Land Reforms Act, the Town and Country Planning Act and…

Whenever there is a thought about banning plastic, the solution offered is to recycle the waste. But, to what extent can the plastic be recycled and reused? What happens to the plastic that is recycled for the tenth time and cannot be recycled again? Is there a solution at sight? Yes, solutions are not too hard to practice. There are a few people to prove this. First is the story of Khan brothers. In 1996, when there was a growing demand for the ban on plastic carry bags in Karnataka, two plastic manufacturers from Bengaluru—Rasool Khan and Ahmed Khan—began to…

Plastic waste from across the city is collected at Jolly Mohalla, before it undergoes recycling process. Pic: Akshatha M Abdul Khader, a middle-aged man, owns a modest plastic waste collection centre in the narrow lanes of Jolly Mohalla. Amidst the bunch of scrap dealers spread across this famous location close to K R Market in Bengaluru, Khader established his shop 25 years ago. For him and his three employees, the day starts at 4 am. Kabadiwalas and ragpickers throng his shop early in the morning carrying plastic waste from across the city. “I buy these plastic cups and plates for…

How many tuition or coaching centres are there in Bengaluru? A simple internet search for SSLC/ PUC or other subject coaching centres in Bengaluru will throw thousands of results at you. No one knows the exact number. Yet, of all these tutorials, only 28 are legal, while the rest are functioning illegally, right under the nose of Education department! Information collected by Citizen Matters from various education departments has revealed that only a handful of tutorials in the city have obtained necessary permission from the department to operate. Majority of the coaching centres that promise to give a bright future…

In the first part of the series Loans for poor in Bengaluru, we explored how the system of loan from informal sources with high interest rates is pushing the poor deeper into poverty. The second part explored the system of bank loans for poor, to see whether it benefits the poor who don’t have securities. In the third part, we examine how micro-finance institutions function, and what do poor people feel about it. Mariyal, a 33-year-old domestic worker living in Ejipura slum in Bengaluru, has taken a Micro Finance Institution (MFI) loan for the first time. She has borrowed Rs…

The first part of the series LOANS FOR URBAN POOR IN BENGALURU explained how the urban poor living in the slums of Bengaluru get trapped in the circle of borrowing, paying interest and re-borrowing. In this part, the author explores the reason behind the same—why banks do not help the poor—how complicated the process is. Sunil, a slum dweller in Swatantrapalya, wants to buy an auto. He needs a loan badly. Not keen on lending money from local moneylenders for extra interest, he wants to secure a bank loan. However, he doesn’t have any collateral security to offer to the…

Alamelu works in one of the flats in a nearby apartment complex. After returning to her home in Swatantrapalya, she prepares incense sticks. Pics: Shree D N Sitting on the floor in her two-room house in Ragigudda EWS quarters, Rajeshwari N, a domestic worker and mother of two, says that she hopes to leave the locality within next two-three years. She has borrowed over Rs 2 lakh to pay the Slum Board for house allotment and to pay off her relatives who wanted to stake claim to the house. Rajeshwari has been living in the area–which was Ragigudda slum earlier–for…

Patients waiting for their turn at the outpatient department in K C General Hospital. Pic: Shree D N What could be the number of people who suffered from dengue in Bengaluru? Out of 443 people who saw a quick survey conducted by Citizen Matters, 171 people replied positively about dengue cases. As many as 20 of them said they themselves got dengue since January 2015. This makes for a percentage of 4.5 cases of dengue on the readership of the survey. If 4.5% of the population in Bengaluru suffered dengue, what could be the numbers? How many might have died?…