GENRE: Voices

There was a time when Harrington Road was exactly what it was meant to be: a quiet, tree-lined residential avenue, one of Chennai’s older and more established neighbourhood corridors. Families chose to live here because it offered something increasingly rare — space, calm, and a sense of community. Today, that same road tells a very different story. Along an approximately 800-metre stretch now stand eight schools, where there used to be three — three hospitals, three auditoriums, eateries and commercial outlets. Individually, each serves an important purpose. Collectively, however, they have created a level of activity that the road and…

Mahesh* owns a small paan and beedi shop near 90 Feet Road. His family has lived in Mumbai’s Dharavi for 50 years. Over the years, they added additional storeys above their home, a common practice in Mumbai's slums. The rent from these upper floors helps Mahesh care for his ageing parents. Redevelopment would cost him both his shop premises and this vital supplementary income. The Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) has given the go-ahead for the bioremediation of solid waste at the Deonar dumping yard to free the plot for housing “ineligible” residents (those lacking documentation) of the Dharavi…

Fifteen lakh trees. A place in the Guinness Book of Records. The Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) has been on overdrive, promoting its new project to plant 15 lakh trees in spaces created in its new layouts. 240 acres have been earmarked across BDA’s faraway layouts. The saplings are to be planted across lake and nala buffer zones, parks and public spaces in new neighbourhoods like Nadaprabhu Kempegowda Layout, Banashankari 6th Stage, and Dr Shivarama Karanth Layout, according to the BDA Chairman N A Haris. While such massive tree plantation exercises are by themselves questionable, there is also the question of a…

Selomi's text arrived at 7 am. "Let's leave by 8.30. The traffic will be brutal otherwise." We both live about 10 kilometres from the government office we had been going to every day for the last two weeks. The nearest metro station is four kilometres from our homes, which means forty minutes to reach it, twenty on the metro, and twenty-five on foot from Vidhana Soudha to the office. An hour and twenty minutes each way, assuming nothing goes wrong. In Bengaluru, something always does. By the end of the second week, we had the routine down. Coffee in a…

The City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO)'s decision to appoint Australian aviation consultancy Avisure to study bird movement around the Navi Mumbai International Airport has raised fresh questions about the future of Navi Mumbai's wetlands. The agency has cited the ongoing study as grounds to defer legal protection for DPS Flamingo Lake, arguing that no irreversible decision should be taken until the assessment of bird-related aviation risks is complete. But bird movement around the airport is not being studied for the first time. Findings of BNHS More than a decade ago, the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) was…

"We are literally risking our lives with floods. We are a coastal city. To mess around with mangroves is digging your own grave," says Pooja Domadia of Save Mumbai Mangroves, a campaign born in the wake of the decision to construct the Versova-Bhayandar Coastal Road in Mumbai. This mega project is going to impact 45,000 mangroves. The cutting of the mangroves has already begun to make way for the 26.3 km Coastal Road. In March this year, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition challenging the Bombay High Court's go-ahead for the project. But concerned Mumbaikars are not giving up. Save…

Nearly a decade ago, while I was working on the Revised Master Plan for Bengaluru (RMP 2031), a senior planner remarked: “Only the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) has the legal right to plan for Bengaluru.” Today, that assertion is unravelling in a tussle between the newly formed Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) and the BDA over who should plan for the city’s future. What is more troubling is that Bengaluru’s current master plan, the RMP 2015, is based on surveys from 2003, nearly two decades out of date. The Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act (KTCPA) of 1961 requires revision every…

Across India, temperatures are soaring, and the impact is evident, from 300 suspected heat-related illness cases reported in Andhra Pradesh to 200 in Maharashtra, say news reports. Heat is unequally felt, with informal workers bearing the brunt of income loss and illness during the blazing hours. Another overlooked impact is heatwaves’ toll on menstrual and reproductive health, where access to washrooms and clean water exacerbates summers for women in low-income settlements, experts say.  Extreme heat exposure overlaps closely with marginalisation, says Vidhya Venugopal, Professor of Climate Change, Occupational and Environmental Health at Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research…

A collective of citizens, environmentalists, legal experts and civil society organisations from across India has demanded that the Supreme Court withdraw oral remarks made by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) during the Pipavav Port hearing on May 11, 2026. The group aims to ensure these comments are not misinterpreted as questioning the legitimacy of genuine environmental public-interest litigation, or the constitutional right of citizens and affected communities to demand the enforcement of environmental laws. In an open letter to the CJI, the coalition outlined urgent environmental concerns and the right of citizens to question irregularities in projects negatively impacting…

Once a “city of lakes,” Thane’s population has roughly increased sevenfold since 1971. The city's estimated population has crossed 27 lakh, making it one of the most densely populated cities in the country. As its population surges, new construction rises at a feverish pace, and infrastructure projects are announced with clockwork regularity. By all outward appearances, Thane is a city on the move. But the question to ask is: Is it moving in a better direction? Sadly, it is not. I am a fourth-generation resident of this city. I grew up here and watched the city transform and lose something…