GENRE: LN

The American Society of Naturalists (ASN) conferred its prestigious 2018 Presidential Award to evolutionary biologists from the National Centre for Biological Sciences of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, based in Bangalore, India. The ASN Presidential Award honors an outstanding research article from among all the papers published in the society's journal, The American Naturalist, in the preceding calendar year. This is a prominent scientific journal that publishes research papers in frontier areas of evolutionary biology. This year's award was given to the NCBS team for their research paper in the April 2017 issue of The American Naturalist, probing how…

On March 18, 2017 I visited a water body in GKM Colony located right next to the K5 Police Station (Peravallur), Jawahar Nagar in response to a request from Arappor Iyakkam to conduct an audit on the city’s water bodies. There were some workers who were involved in spraying chemicals and were also at the same time removing the floating garbage from this particular pond, which is called the Vannankuttai. A storm water drain (SWD) was found to be discharging untreated sewage directly into the Vannankuttai through a circular pipe, as you will see in the following image: Summer was…

Once there was a river. Rather, there were many rivers. And then there were none. In the run up to Arappor Iyakkam's Sakkadai Thiruvizha, a citizen awareness program to highlight the problem of sewage being let into Chennai's water bodies, two young photographers -- Raghavan Lokesh and Mohan Kumar Karunakaran -- volunteered to travel along Chennai's rivers, and capture images for our readers. The pictures are heart breaking. Let us take a minute to view, and mull over, what we have done to the lifelines of this city. [Raghavan Lokesh is an entrepreneur and has been volunteering with Arappor Iyakkam…

On the evening of Saturday, March 31st, the residents of Besant Nagar were taken aback when large stretches of perfectly laid pavements, between Theosophical Society and Olcott School, interspersed with young trees protected by tree guards, were dug up and uprooted by a crew from the Greater Chennai Corporation. When they asked what the work was about, and who had ordered it, they were told that the Bus Route Roads (BRR) department of the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), had a plan to widen the pavements and provide bicycle lanes. But why break perfectly good stretches when there are so many…

With summer approaching, the beaches in Chennai are expected to have more visitors looking to beat the heat but sadly, given the state of safety measures in these beaches, the safe return of the visitor is entirely up to chance and personal precautions. The lack of adequate safeguards is serious cause for concern among citizens and NGOs alike. A recent case, in which a teen hockey player in Chennai drowned off the Marina, spurred the Madras High Court (MHC) into action. The court directed the state government to install watchtowers and station lifesaving boats on the beach to prevent any…

Aravind Limbavalli, the MLA of Mahadevapura, may not have an easy time when he takes his election campaign to Kasavanahalli. The area which recently saw an illegal building collapse resulting in the death of five people is reeling under a plethora of problems. Having had enough, on March 10th, more than 1500 members of 28 RWAs who are part of the Kasavanahalli Development Forum, took out a silent protest and made 2 km long human chain against official apathy towards the various civic problems in the area that has even resulted in deaths as well. It is a little difficult…

For slum dwellers evicted from the banks of the Adyar and Cooum rivers in Chennai, currently residing in Perumbakkam, access to food rations under the Public Distribution System (PDS) is proving to be one arduous process. In addition to lack of educational facilities for children and infrastructural inadequacies highlighted in earlier articles in Citizen Matters Chennai, severe lapses in the functioning of the government-organised PDS, leading to insufficient essential commodities that families are dependent on, have also come to light. Inadequate numbers of PDS centres For the estimated number of 7600 families in Perumbakkam, there is only one PDS centre,…

March 23, 2015; the venue: Chennai Corporation Council. While passing the budget of his last term in office, 'Saidai' Duraisamy, then Mayor of Chennai remarked, “Of the 419 announcements made by the AIADMK-led Corporation so far,  218 have been implemented. We will implement the remaining 165 this year.” This was at the Corporation Council meet on the budget. He also compared the percentage of announcements that were implemented in the earlier regime vs his current regime and was proud that he had  done better by a margin of 15%. In that budget debate, 103 of the 200 councillors participated. The opposition…

Chief Election Commissioner of Election Commission of India (ECI) Om Prakash Rawat announced the poll dates for Karnataka on Tuesday, March 27, 2018. The election will be held on May 12th across the state in a single phase. Counting of votes will take place on May 15th, 2018. Full schedule of events: April 17: Notification April 24: Last day to submit nomination April 26: Nomination scrutiny April 27: Last day to withdraw nomination May 12: Voting May 15: Counting and results Read the full press note from the Election Commission: [embeddoc url="https://citizenmatters.in/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PN22_27032018.pdf" download="all"] Slew of measures towards free and fair…

Would you believe it if you hear that Chennai has around 160 public libraries? While the Connemara and the Anna Centenary libraries are icons in their own right, the city has a total of 162 part and full time libraries open to the public. From military quarters to hospitals and the regional passport office, part-time and branch libraries have been functioning modestly from a range of spaces across across different wards. The Tamil Nadu Public Libraries Act, notified in 1948 provided for the establishment of public libraries for both rural and urban areas across the state. As per the Act,…