GENRE: LN

On the morning of Sunday, July 16th, 10 of us, a group of teenagers, worked for almost four hours, scraping bills, removing garbage, and repainting electrical boxes near Marathahalli Bridge, Bengaluru. We started our work at 6.30 am. By the time we finished, the stretch of road was clean, colorful, and a pleasure to see! This is just one of many projects that we have taken up in the past year, working under the group name of Clean Up Bangalore, or CUB. CUB is an initiative that originated in August 2016 when three of us, Rithana, Achyutha, and Neha, found…

Wrong information is being put out on the official Metropolitan Transport Corporation of Chennai MTC website, www.mtcbus.org, on the routes that it operates. The website itself is unfriendly and the design is years old. While MTC operates several ‘small bus’ routes, it has wrongly prefixed regular routes with S in the database, while not giving information on Small Bus routes. For example, the regular route 7E is prefixed as S07E from Broadway to Ambattur Estate. S26 has been listed as if it is a small bus, when in fact it is route 26, from Broadway to Iyyappanthangal. Such wrong information given…

His shy demeanour belies an extraordinary amount of compassion and resilience. Vignesh Mahadevan is all of 16 years old, and one of Chennai’s most passionate voices for the rights of birds and animals. Vignesh started feeding strays when he was seven years old. His first rescues were puppies that were stranded or separated from their mothers during the floods in Chennai in December 2015.  Slowly he started to rescue dogs as well. Only about 60% of the rescued dogs survive, often they have infections such as distemper and parvo (which may have prompted the owner to abandon the dog in…

This programme features young participants of Radio Active's annual story-telling competition held in schools and NGOs across the city. Their stories highlight important aspects like child rights; Children also recount fables and regional classics that impact morals and life lessons. https://soundcloud.com/radioactivecr90-4mhz/story-telling-children-with-their-story-tales-rj-manjula-rajeshasamanth-yuvaraju

There was once a time when two national highways ran through the heart of Bengaluru city. This is no longer the case since national highways have been renamed and restructured in recent years. Yet, recently, the nightlife hubs MG Road and Brigade Road were ordered to stop serving alcohol based on the Supreme Court order  banning alcohol service in establishments just off national highways across India. The Supreme Court mandated the ban of alcohol service from establishments within 500 meters of state and national highways. The ban was put into action on July 1st , halting alcohol service from over…

Chennai’s character is defined by its resilience. The city powerfully rose to the occasion when it was hit by floods in 2015. Nature was not any kinder in 2016. Cyclone Vardah stripped the city of its green cover in December 2016. At least one lakh trees were uprooted in Chennai during Vardah, resulting in about 21 to 28 percent loss of green cover. It was observed during Vardah that native trees survived the disaster but exotic trees perished in the calamity. This is because the former have a deep-rooted system while exotic species generally have shallow roots and cannot withstand…

Most of us would be surprised to know that Chennai’s is the oldest city Corporation in Asia, only behind London in the world. It is also interesting to note that Chennai’s suburban Railways was started as early as 1931 to bridge the northern and southern parts of the city. Since independence, the Chennai suburban transportation system has been operated by Southern Railways, the oldest operating zone in independent India. Suburban railways has evolved as an arterial system for transportation in Chennai and  handles 17,60,000 people per day.  Yet, as the commuter load increased a critical gap began to be felt…

District Lions Service Foundation (DLSF-317 A) has built a 'Lions Centennial Clock Tower to commemorate successful completion of 100 years of service to mankind. The Lions Centennial Clock Tower is built at RBI Layout play ground, Phase 7, JP Nagar. The centennial clock tower comprises of a large clock with an hourly chime, bust of legendary Lions founder Lion Melvin Jones and large Lions logo which stood as a common identity for Lions over the last 100 years. It was inaugurated on 30th June 2017, by M Krishnappa, MLA , Bangalore South Constituency in the presence of Shashi Rekha Jayaram,…

Every day, thousands of residential homes and apartment complexes across suburban Chennai, which are not connected to the underground drainage network of the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB), are at the mercy of the private sewage lorries which remove the sewage water from their septic tanks. The lorry-owners demand anywhere between Rs 750 - 1000 per tanker load. Not satisfied with this, and driven by the sole objective of maximising their profits, they illegally dump the entire raw sewage water from the lorries into open fields, lake beds and storm water drains. The capacity of a tanker…

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.” - Plato Many of us believed in the court orders that asked BBMP Commissioner to form the ward committees and avoid undue influence of corporators.  Nearly 600 applications have been submitted by ordinary citizens  - about 190 of them coming through our efforts of soliciting nominations for active citizens and then impressing upon them to submit an application. There wasn't any application format or process that anyone knew of , but we were repeatedly assured by the commissioner himself that we should encourage more…