GENRE: Report

In January this year, the Floating Market, the only one of its kind in eastern India, came to life in the Baishnabghata Patuli area in Kolkata. With almost 114 boats docked next to the long, winding, wooden jetty, dissecting the Patuli lake through the middle, this Floating Market, selling fresh vegetables, fruits, fish and poultry was an idea borrowed from Bangkok’s floating markets by the state Urban Development Minister, Firhad Hakim. Unlike Bangkok, there is no provision though to shop around in a boat here and neither are the sellers mobile, but that hasn’t stopped people from afar to throng…

West Bengal’s tryst with dengue in 2017 could not have been more deadly. Around 13000 people were affected and nearly 100 people lost their lives to the disease. Among the worst hit was the South 24 Parganas district with every household having at least one person down with the mosquito-borne disease. So, the citizens cannot be blamed for going into a panic mode every time the possibility of another outbreak is suspected. This being the case, you would expect the state government to be on its toes, leaving no stones unturned to ensure another dengue outbreak is avoided. Unfortunately, that’s not the…

It was in 1997 that Bangalore city corporation issued the first municipal bond in India, backed by a state government guarantee. The next year, Ahmedabad issued bonds worth Rs 100 crore, without government guarantee. But the momentum didn’t pick up - bonds worth only about Rs 1500 cr have been issued overall since then, and there have been no issues in the more recent years. Last June, however, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) became the first city to issue bonds after a long gap. Bonds worth Rs 200 cr were issue to fund PMC’s 24X7 water supply project. Then again, in…

The growth in the nation’s cities has been maddeningly slow. And it has not even been much, according to the fifth edition of Janaagraha’s Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) 2017. There has been some improvement in the quality of governance in 23 cities. Yet, this has come about at a frustrating snail’s pace. Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (Janaagraha), a Bengaluru-based non-profit, has surveyed the quality of governance in 23 major cities in 20 states. The survey was based on 89 questions. Pune was the Number 1 grosser, scoring between 3.0 and 5.1 on 10 and topping the…

Pictures of the smoke-ridden Indian capital city with its choking pollution levels and roads chock-a-block with vehicles are the stuff of front page news every other day, but now Delhi's new parking policy approved by Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal is expected to jointly address both the congestion and the pollution to some extent. The Parking Management Area Plan (PMAP), which came into effect in the last week of February, proposes a number of variable charges for residential and commercial areas; these charges are envisioned to impact the demand for parking space in Delhi, and in turn influence the usage of personal vehicles. However,…

Long before television, it was the radio that caught your ear and put it to the ground of the world. Never mind if it was a word, a note or even just a sound byte that floated into your mind. It chimed around in your head and drove home special, or even just informal, messages.   The celebration of the legacy and experience of that special wonder gadget, then, resonated with the diverse audiences at The Radio Festival (TRF), hosted by the International Association of Women in Radio and Television, partnering with UNESCO on February 15th, 2018, at New Delhi.…

I first met  Prasad Natarajan in 2014, when we attended a wildlife volunteer training program together. Even then, in the beautiful environs of Kudremukh, Karnataka, I always found him with a sketchpad and a pencil in his hands. Since then, his artwork, especially on the theme of wildlife, has become quite well known. He is not afraid of using the most difficult and unforgiving of art media, such as Indian ink (lampblack collected in a container and mixed with grease, and applied carefully to paper.) He is now an artist whose work finds homes across the world. However, Prasad decided to…

In the second week of January, amidst heavy security provided by the local police and the Karnataka State Reserve Police (KSRP), Forest Department officials -- along with the Dakshina Kannada district authorities and personnel from Mangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited (MESCOM) -- began uprooting and chopped nearly 202 trees at Alake village in Padil in Mangalore city in Karnataka. The 10.09-acre area formerly under Karnataka State Forest Industries Corporation (KSFIC) at Padil - is located on National Highway 75. In 2014, the state government transferred 5.89 acres to the Revenue Department. The Alake area with survey No. 23/6A1B2, 23/4B, 23/12B,…

On December 22nd, a woman was forced to deliver her child at the Mangalore Railway Junction (MAJN), after an ambulance failed to reach the remote area due to the narrow roads leading up to it. The 26-year-old woman, identified as Lata, a migrant labourer from Madhya Pradesh, was waiting for the train at the station, when she started experiencing labour pain and repeatedly cried out for help. Abubakker, a local rickshaw driver, immediately called 108 emergency services and directed them to the location. However, though the nearest ambulance reached the spot, the vehicle could not drive up to the station…

On December 3rd 2017, Pimple Saudagar, an upmarket suburb under the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (sister city of Pune) hosted a meeting of citizens, apartment associations, shop owners and not-for-profit organisations to commit themselves to a movement that could alter the ecological footprint of the entire area. Come January 1st and Pimple Saudagar has resolved to go plastic bag free, entirely! Today everyone is aware of the impact of plastic pollution; there have been enough campaigns, disincentives for usage (such as imposing additional charges for plastic carry bags), incentives for avoidance (such as distribution of free bags by NGOs ) and…