GENRE: In Focus

Rahul K was waiting for a friend to pick him up from home that morning. He was heading for a job interview but did not seem to have the proverbial butterflies in his stomach. “I will attend, for whatever it is worth,” he said. The cynicism in his tone was unmissable….and way too much for a 21-year-old, I thought. Dressing up in formals and attending job interviews had become his daily routine ever since BBMP relaxed the nearly three-month-long lockdown, he said, speaking over a mobile phone that he shares with his mother. He has applied for dozens of jobs…

Rini Simon Khanna, whose presence and voice are part of most events of substance in the national capital, recently moderated the  United Nations Global Compact’s “Regional Perspectives on Leadership for a Global Crisis: Asia Pacific”. The same evening, she also moderated the launch of the Global Nutrition Report 2020. With one major difference from the past: the well-known former television anchor moderated both these events online. “Most events are already happening online,” said Rini. “Now, all work will be segregated into that which needs F2F (face to face) attendance or physical presence, and that which can be done through online platforms. These events…

Having spent the first two months of the pandemic and nationwide lockdown in politicking, to first grab and then stay in power, the Shivraj Singh Chauhan-led BJP government has now launched a 15-day state-wide “Kill Corona” programme from July 1st. The programme includes door to door surveys in urban slums and low-income households having high population density and poor municipal management as a majority of positive cases in both cities have been reported from these areas. As per data from the government's smart city portal, Indore has the second highest slum population (30%) in the state, followed by Jabalpur (46%)…

Management of solid waste has been a persistent issue for various cities. Chennai has been grappling to find ways to deal with its burgeoning quantum of waste and has tried out several experiments centered around decentralisation, starting from the early 2000s. While the city’s progress on this front has been patchy, some signs of promise had begun to sprout just before the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Prior to lockdown Chennai made crucial strides towards decentralised waste management with a pilot project  in Anna Nagar, that saw a significant reduction in waste sent to the landfills. The Zero Waste initiative…

“Ab to dus rupaye wala customer bhi chalega, kam se kam chai aur pav to khane ko milenge is lockdown mein (Now, even a customer who can pay ten rupees will do. It can get me some chai and bread at least during this lockdown),” says Beauty Biswas, a sex worker at Kamathipura, Mumbai’s notorious red light district, located virtually at the centre of the city.  The coronavirus pandemic has severely affected the sustenance of these women in Kamathipura. The area is home to about 4500 -5000 sex workers, who have been rendered jobless and penniless since the lockdown was clamped.…

Pre-Covid, Delhi's crematoriums used to be littered with heaps of withered marigold, broken bits of earthen pots, tetrapac containers containing ghee and mineral water bottles. Today, even as COVID has made cremation of bodies a challenge in itself and sharply restricted attendance at funerals, the garbage dumped at these sites is becoming dangerous -- consisting mainly of biomedical waste as people carelessly strew their PPE body suits, masks, gloves, shoe covers etc that they wore to the funeral. Such are the proportions of the problem that on June 22nd, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation slapped a Rs 50,000 penalty on the Arya Samaj…

When Mumbai’s lifeline, the suburban train services were abruptly halted on March 24th, as the country went into a lockdown that would stretch for weeks, the city’s public bus service, BEST, rose to the occassion to single-handedly keep the city running. At the height of the COVID lockdown, BEST buses were the only transport available in the city, transporting essential services workers to their work places and back. BEST ran special services to ferry COVID warriors to hospitals, banks and other essential locations. With most of Mumbai’s municipal, health and other essential service workers living in distant suburbs, and some…

The clampdown on all non-essential activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant decline in air pollution levels in major cities across India. Researchers from Respirer Living Sciences and Carbon Copy have analysed average air quality during all four lockdown phases in India as well as concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), and Benzene during individual phases for Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, as part of their on-going National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) Tracker project to monitor the implementation of the NCAP. Four cities witness clean air From March 25 to…

More than 830 police personnel have tested positive for COVID-19 in Chennai. An Inspector with Mambalam Police Station succumbed to the virus recently, the first cop to have died with COVID-19 in Tamil Nadu.  From protecting individuals to taking care of guest workers in shelters, ensuring compliance with mandated norms in hospitals and public places and inspecting checkpoints, the police has had to deal with a variety of tasks on a daily basis. Well aware of their vulnerability to the infection, a total of 18,000 cops belonging to Traffic, Law and Order and crime departments have been toiling on the…

Picture this. Your monthly income falls from Rs 15,000 to zero. How does the state government, which is expected to mitigate the crisis leading to this situation, help you? By announcing cash support of Rs 1000, 15 kg of rice, one kg of dal and one kg of edible oil. The help may not be really enough, but it's some relief. But no, wait, this feeling too proves to be fleeting, because the government wants you to be a part of a welfare board to avail the benefits. The board you didn't even know existed.  This is the story of…