GENRE: Voices

It all started when a Facebook user Sandhya was browsing multiple online gifting sites for Rakshabandhan this year, and came across a website that sold ‘combo’ gift items for siblings. All that was fine, of course, except that there were some products designed and marketed in a way that specifically addressed one of the siblings as an adopted child, and in a manner that many found to be derogatory.  At a time when the concept of adoption is still not very well accepted in our society, the last thing we need is people making fun of an issue that has…

It will perhaps be a long time before Chennai can witness any spell of heavy rain without getting jitters over the nightmarish memory of December 2015. The 2015 floods that devastated the city exposed the state of urban planning in the city. The lack of resilience to natural disasters remains one of the greatest concerns of the people of one of India’s largest cities.  What should be noted is that certain parts of Chennai experienced greater flooding than others and this impacted rescue and relief efforts. Poor urban planning, coupled with an expanding population that requires more space, leads to…

It was in April 2018  that a bunch of enthusiasts banded together to make an increasingly chaotic Adyar, a more livable place. This led to a programme called 'Azhagiya Adyar' conducted last year at the KNRA Hall in collaboration with the Namma Ooru Foundation (NOF). The event was a big success and it encouraged the bunch to take the movement to higher levels.  It was around the same time that the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) announced plans to implement source segregation of waste, door-to-door collection and proper disposal by GCC of such segregated waste through composting, bio-methanation, recycling etc. We sensed…

Recent incidents of chain snatching as well as petty theft in our Vasanth Nagar neighbourhood made us realise we needed to do something. There were many dark spots due to the lack of uniform streetlighting -  random gaps between adjacent streetlights, and tree branches covering the light. So, Citizens for Citizens (C4C), a self-help citizens’ forum, decided to carry out a ‘streetlight survey’ in Vasanth Nagar. How are street lights maintained? BBMP has ward-wise contractors to maintain streetlights. If the contractors come to know of a defective streetlight, they may do repairs, but this system is unreliable. BBMP can also…

It has been two weeks since the abrogation of Article 370 and the trifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir, and yet most of the state remains under a lockdown. With a virtual blockade and clampdown on communication and Internet services, millions of residents in the state have been cut off from the rest of the country. For the same reason, many other Kashmiris living and working in other parts of the country have also been cut off from their families for close to 16 days running. While the partial restoration of landline services has provided some relief, any semblance of normal…

Co-authored by Dattatraya T Devare and Saurabh Ketkar None of us can escape being a pedestrian. No matter which mode of transport you use, at some point of the day, you will be a pedestrian if you step out of home. But the moment you alight from any mode of transport or vehicle, and get on your own two feet in this country, you are perhaps the most vulnerable citizen on the street. In 2018, more than half of the fatalities on Mumbai streets were pedestrians; the numbers for Delhi and Bengaluru also do not look encouraging with 44% and…

The residents of Adarsh Palm Retreat and surrounding areas in Bellandur are staging a peaceful protest and forming a human chain on August 20th to highlight traffic congestion and pollution in and around their community. This is not the first time that the residents are staging a protest to highlight the pressing issues that have been neglected for long. From time to time the residents have gathered to demand for a livable Bellandur.  Traffic woes have plagued the residents of Bellandur ever since office buildings have taken over and surrounded them, hindering their access to the Outer Ring Road (ORR). It…

As this article gets ready for publication, we already know of 24 fatalities caused by relentless rainfall and flash floods in Himachal Pradesh and other parts of north India. Several deaths have been reported from the capital Shimla itself, while hundreds remain stranded in various other parts of the Himalayan state. However, this is not the first extreme weather event to befall the region in recent times, nor, unfortunately, does there seem to be much hope of such disasters being stemmed. Will the allocation of some extra funds in the name of green bonus and the setting up of a…

Last week the consultants tasked with preparing the Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the BRTS invited us to a meeting. A few of us from FOMRRA (Federation of OMR Resident Associations), representing citizens living and using OMR (Old Mahabalipuram Road), went to the meeting. The show started with some short films on the "successfully implemented projects" in Pune, Amdavad, Hubli-Dharwad and others. As the consultation started more than an hour late, they breezed through a PowerPoint presentation. However, we, who follow the mass transit planning and development studies associated with OMR, found that most of the data presented was based…

A well-known architect and town planner recently commented on a WhatsApp group that the whole of Bengaluru had become one construction site - with Koramangala being the epicentre - resulting in the city's livability index being at its lowest ever. If you live in Koramangala, it is hard to not notice all the development projects that are going on. You have the Ejipura - Kendriya Sadan flyover, the Maharaja Bridge, BWSSB's 6ft-diameter sewage pipeline project, BBMP's flood mitigation project, white-topping of roads all over (of course, to be dug up just days later to lay utility lines). [flexiblemap src="http://data.opencity.in/Data/Bengaluru-Koramangala-Development-projects-2019.kml" width="100%"…