GENRE: Report

The Delhi administration is finally realising the usefulness of the humble cycle. Not only as a much needed commute alternative, but also as a tool to combat Delhi’s perennial poor air quality. Recently, vendors, factory workers, daily wage labourers and other workers who cycle daily to work joined forces to urge the Delhi government to fast track moves to create safe cycling infrastructure and dedicated cycle lanes. The Delhi government reacted by saying it will develop dedicated cycle tracks across the national capital, especially on stretches that are most used by cyclists. Read more: Delhi divided: Will new parking management…

At 8 AM Sunday, on February 6*, 2022, about 150 people congregated at the Khajaguda Cave Trail in Hyderabad. Among them were young scientists, engineers, IT professionals and artists. There were young couples, grandparents and children. There were adventure sport enthusiasts and bird watchers. Most of them had never met each other except through social media. Very few considered themselves activists. Yet, this was no casual social occasion. They were agitated. They had a hunch that they were witnessing something horrifying: a mound of dirt the size of two football grounds and some twenty feet high, that had been created…

The once iconic Palika Bazar at the centre of Delhi’s Connaught Place area has now earned a dubious distinction: Being classified among India’s five Notorious Markets List (NML) in the US Trade Representative list of such markets. Notorious being an euphemism for selling “counterfeit and pirated” goods. “It may have been so in 2007-08 but not now,” said Vinay Thakur, General Secretary of Palika Bazar Association. “We sell electronic items like headphones, torches, hair dryers, lights, lipsticks and emergency lights and they are mostly Chinese. We are retailers and sell whatever we get”. Most visitors to the market are youngsters…

On June 4th, 2021, a leopard took away a four-year-old girl from the lawns of her house and later mauled her to death in a nearby nursery. The little girl’s body was found after two days in a nursery, barely a few hundred metres away from her house, in Ompora locality of Central Kashmir’s Budgam town. The incident left the entire wildlife department of Kashmir shaken.  Four-year-old victim Adha was playing in the lawns of her home when the leopard took her away. Her family was totally unaware of the incident. Some wildlife officials said that the leopard had in…

The orders were verbal, with no paper trail. Curiously, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation was the last to implement it. In one fell swoop, four BJP-controlled municipal corporations directed their executive wings to launch a drive to remove Ahmedabad's street vendors selling eggs and other non-vegetarian eatables at roadside stalls. One reason given for these verbal orders was that the sight of non-veg food displayed in the stalls hurts the religious sentiments of the Hindus. The drive to remove all such street vendors from the streets began from Rajkot on November 9th. Vadodara was next, followed immediately by Bhavnagar and Junagadh.…

“Our mindset is such that we want everything free,” says Umesh Desai director of water resources at Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, Ahmedabad. That mindset led to much initial resistance when resident associations in about 15 apartment complexes in Ahmedabad decided to install individual water meters and started charging for the water consumed by each apartment. Given that in most Indian cities, charges for utilities like water and electricity are heavily subsidised and nowhere near actual production costs, and free water and electricity is a sop most political parties offer during elections, it took some convincing the Ahmedabad flat owners…

As cities use up more resources, produce more and consumption spirals upward, there is a concomitant increase in solid waste generation. While this solid waste is comprised of both biodegradable waste and non-biodegradable waste (plastic, rubber, aluminum, glass etc.), the latter is what is most damaging to the environment. Most of the non-biodegradable waste ends up in landfills, open dumps and the natural environment, such as drains, rivers, lakes and the oceans. The iconic Hussain Sagar lake in Hyderabad presents a perfect example of an urban water body impacted by an increase in the flow of floating solid waste from…

When the rest of the country was grappling with the highly virulent COVID second wave in March-April, the Jammu and Kashmir government was busy with preparations to host a mega-Tulip festival at Asia’s largest Tulip garden in Srinagar. Scheduled for six days starting April 3rd, thousands of local residents, tourists and officials thronged the garden on the inaugural day. The event was jointly inaugurated by J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and Kerala Governor Arif Muhammad Khan. Prime Minister Narendera Modi was the festival’s brand ambassador. Prior to the official inauguration, Modi had tweeted: “……..The garden will see over 15 lakh…

“We have written around 200 online complaints, given seven petitions, have even written to the Lieutenant Governor and Delhi government’s forest department,” says Amit Kumar, a resident of Dwarka Sector 8, who is leading the campaign against the felling of trees for a storm water drain project in this vast Delhi colony. “Dwarka is one of the most polluted areas in Delhi. There is only one park in Sector 8 that serves all its approximately 15,000 residents, which includes the nearby Bagdola village and Raj Nagar Part 2 as well. Earlier, a park was destroyed to make way for a sports…

Delhi is perhaps the only state government so far to set up a committee specifically to help revive the city’s economy. Headed by Jasmine Shah, a technocrat,  the 12-member Committee on Economic Revival of the City, comprising representatives from the government, municipal corporations and trade and industrial bodies, is drawing up plans to enable the informal sector, small shops and businesses in particular get back on their feet. In its first meeting on July 8th, the committee, decided to focus on revisiting licensing norms and increasing demand to push trade and industries. Jasmine is an M Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras and…