GENRE: In Focus

As station after station is built along the nearly 119 kilometres of Namma Metro under Phase 2, it is crucial to review the design of the existing infrastructure and analyse it through the lens of inclusivity and accessibility.  Any city comprises a diverse group of people with varying needs, and all public infrastructure must cater to different user groups such as persons with disabilities(PwD), trans persons, the elderly, parents with young children, etc.  The Metro Rail policy 2017, a central level policy that has to be adhered to at the state level, lays down guidelines requiring Metro infrastructure to ensure…

It is a promise all three parties in the fray made - clearing Delhi’s landfills, the three main sites being Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla. Now it has fallen on the winner of Delhi's municipal elections, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), to fulfil that promise. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has specifically promised to get the three landfill sites cleared over the next five years; the first one to be done by 2024. Waste management overall, not just clearing the landfills, had figured prominently in the manifestos of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress too. The latter had described the Ghazipur…

A room of one's own is considered a basic necessity for a good life. But having one's own space to work, study and rest and a guarantee of privacy are a dream that is seemingly unattainable for many in Chennai. At a time when the city's real estate price seems to be skyrocketing, there are still many families who live in a single room in Chennai, without a proper roof and any ventilation. For these residents, the dream is not to build or buy a big multi-storey house, but merely call a space home where they can stretch their legs…

On November 8th, 28-year-old Aftab Ameen Poonawala was arrested for allegedly strangling his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar. They had had a violent argument. He cut her body into 35 pieces, kept them in a 300-litre fridge. Over the next few days Aftab disposed of the pieces at various places in Delhi’s Mehrauli forest area. While this incident — the Delhi Fridge case, as it is being referred to — has received relentless media focus, an increasing number of such gruesome crimes, often labelled crimes of passion, has been reported in the recent past. Family disputes and the breakdown of relationships…

On December 1st, Mumbai’s King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital became the first civic facility in the city to get approval for a 24x7 cardiac catheterisation lab. The approval comes a month after the announcement was first made in November. A cardiac cath lab functions as a centre for doctors to perform minimally invasive tests and procedures to diagnose and treat cardiovascular disease. It is the alarming rise in deaths due to heart attacks in 2021 that prompted Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) health officials to start a pilot 24x7 cath lab at KEM. Last year, Mumbai recorded a total of 17,880…

In a previous article, we looked at how personal data illegally collected by the NGO Chilume can impact the privacy and safety of voters as well as affect the integrity of our elections. The News Minute (TNM) and Pratidhvani reported that workers and external vendors, hired by Chilume, posed as booth level officials (BLOs), complete with identity cards signed by BBMP election officials, to illegally collect voter data. This is the second part of a series looking deeper into the implications of the Bengaluru voter data theft controversy. Part I: Illegal voter data collection: Does it really matter? Part II:…

This is the second story of a two-part series on why finding a sustainable solution to regulate Delhi’s legal and illegal street vendors is so difficult. You can read Part I here. Kuldip Singh Sawhney, president of the Sarojini Market Shopkeepers' Association, says they moved a case against the street vendors in the Delhi High Court in September 2021. “Our plea was that according to the Master Plan 2021, the vendors holding capacity of this market is 60 to 80. On an adhoc basis, 65 vegetable stalls were allowed and there are 125 Thareja vendors. In addition, 324 of the…

"Rising petrol prices motivated me to buy an electric two-wheeler in Chennai," says V Akash, who rides an Ather 450X electric scooter. S Kaushik, who owns a Hero Electric Optima HX scooter, has a similar tale to narrate. "I wanted to try something new. Plus, the subsidy also substantially lowered the cost, making it a very viable option. There was a discount of around Rs. 40,000 to Rs. 45,000 when I bought my scooter last year," he says. Many electric two-wheeler users have almost the same motivation for buying an EV. "There is hardly any maintenance cost. We do not…

The  voter data scam, uncovered by The News Minute (TNM) and Pratidhvani, has raised concerns over the breach of privacy and the misuse of voter data. At the heart of the issue is the actual voter data. This is the first part of a series looking deeper into the implications of the Bengaluru voter data theft controversy. Part I: Illegal voter data collection: Does it really matter? (this article)Part II: Illegal voter data collection: How can we protect our privacy?Part III: Illegal voter data collection: Frontline workers of election management The crucial allegation against the NGO Chilume Educational Cultural and…

59% of the world’s population defecating in the open live in India. The sanitation situation is far worse in urban informal settlements. One such settlement is Shivaji Nagar, a neighbourhood located in the lowest-ranked ward of Mumbai. Communities in Shivaji Nagar have lived with toilet scarcity for decades. They face multiple challenges related to sanitation due to systemic marginalisation and strategic placement beside Asia’s largest landfill.  A study, taking stock of sanitation in Shivaji Nagar, was released recently by Apnalaya, a non-profit organisation working on issues of the urban poor. The NGO has been working in Shivaji Nagar for many decades.  Map showing functional and…