GENRE: LN

Who has forgotten the incident that took place recently, in which a man burgled in to a paying guest facility and raped a 25-year-old techie? Naturally everyone is worried about the safety of their own PG facilities. When something goes wrong, police are the ones to protect people. But here’s the shocker for you: Bengaluru police doesn’t have a list of paying guest facilities in the city. And the city administration body, BBMP too doesn’t have a list of authorised PGs readily available online. In one of the reports, police officers said that it was not for the first time…

Read more

When a resident of Whitefield in Bengaluru, Anjali Saini, asked the road diggers on the streets of Whitefield to show the permission by the BBMP, she never knew what it will lead to. What she was shown was a permission given to Vodafone by BBMP, which had many pages filled with various clauses. She found many violations to the terms mentioned in the letter. There was neither any barrricade, nor any warning lights or signage in the spot where the work was progressing. There was no indication of when the work would begin or close. The excess excavated mud which…

Read more

Bellandur Buzz…June 20th 2014 Shared fortnightly by the Citizen group bellandur-forum@googlegroups.comKasa Muktha Bellandur on 97.5 FMThis week, Kasa Muktha Bellandur initiative got some air time on 97.5 FM. The RJ called the Environment Engineer of the ward to ask details about 2-bin-1-bag process and congratulated her on the success of the initiative. When the city is dealing with the Mandur crisis all over again, and the waste situation in the city does not seem any better than what it was two years ago, the success of the SWM experiment in our own ward brings some hope. Read more about the initiative…

Read more

  High Court of Karnataka (HC) asked Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike to be careful while choosing the lowest bidders while awarding tenders for biomining at Mandur, as many of them have failed in the past. On June 18 2014, HC Green Bench Division comprising of Justice N Kumar and B V Nagarathna passed a series of orders in the SWM PIL filed in 2012 after the villagers of Mavallipura  and Mandur stopped dumping of garbage. HC accepted the suggestions of  the Expert Committee on Solid Waste Management made on June 13, 2014, to adopt the method of biomining to clear…

Read more

Expert Committee on Solid Waste Management submitted to the High Court in Bengaluru that a simple and the only solution to solve Mandur problem effectively was to screen the dump, recover the useful materials and dispose the organic and inert waste, through a process called biomining. On Friday (June 13th 2014) the Green Bench of High Court of Karnataka, comprising Justice B V Nagarathna and Justice N Kumar received the suggestions by the Expert Committee, on how to dispose the existing dump, the measures to be taken by the BBMP among others. A copy of the suggestions ia available with…

Read more

Bengaluru has lots of people who want to minimise their waste by preparing their own compost, and growing vegetables from that. Some such people started this wondeful initiative - Oota From Your thota, the organic vegetable gardening fair. The fair is here again. Trees of Bengaluru is pitching in this time. When: Sunday, June 15 Venue: Whitefield Club, Whitefield main road Map: http://goo.gl/2PjU1f Tree walks will be conducted by Trees of Bengaluru. 1)  A season Watch Workshop - 11 AM 2) Tree Walk for kids - 4 PM 3) Tree Walk for adults - 4 PM Here's where you can…

Read more

  'We never know the worth of water till the well is dry'.                                                                                   - Thomas Fuller, English Historian Bangalore is facing a water crisis like never before. Our lakes are polluted. Several of them have been built over. More than half of the city’s drinking water comes from 150 km away - 35% of this water is lost due…

Read more

It is literally the neglected backyard of Bengaluru. When you enter the ill-fated village of Mandur, the pungent smell of rotting garbage fills your nostrils. You will have to bear it, till you leave the village. When the winds are strong, the smell too becomes strong. The village is just a kilometre or so from the dumpyard. When we went inside Mandur past the police security on the main road, the sight of death welcomed us — villagers had gathered around the dead body of a resident, Narayana Rao, in front of his house, despite the curfew imposed. Rao had…

Read more

  In mid 2013, deeply troubled by the wasted condition of their beloved city, when a group of concerned citizens got together to decode the garbage matrix, little did they expect that less than a year down the line, they would have so much cause for celebration. Their experiment in segregation at source developed into a winning formula, garnering unprecedented popularity as it moved on. Today, this simple formula has translated into saving over 291 trees, 1.4 lakh units of electricity, 1174 liters of fuel and 617 cubic meters of landfill area. Think of how Bangalore could be transformed if…

Read more

A small portion of the garbage pile in Mandur landfill. Pic: Shree D N The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has withheld the payment of more than three crores to Srinivas Gayathri Resources Recovery Limited (SGRRL), the only processing unit at one of the garbage dumping yards at Mandur, that supposedly had the capacity to process 600 tonnes of waste per day. This resulted in the company shutting down its operations three months ago, claims Srinivas Reddy, the Operations Manager of the plant at Mandur, located near to Hoskote Highway on the north-eastern outskirts of Bengaluru. What waste management firm says:BBMP…

Read more