GENRE: Voices

Bimal Desai has been a one-man army protecting much of what we see of Cubbon Park. The 14 cases he filed over the last two decades ensured that night-time traffic was banned in the park and encroachments were kept at bay. But one of his learnings while he was fighting the system over the years, was that you can't always win. So while he continued his legal battles, Desai decided to parallelly start greening the city to compensate for its lost green cover. Using the Miyawaki method, he has created eight patches of forests in his house, which is set…

Bengaluru is known for its high levels of citizen activism, but low level of citizen participation in elections, the most important instrument of democracy. The trend continued this Lok Sabha election too. However, some apartment societies did a lot of work to buck this trend and improve the voter turnout. One such society was ours - Prestige Shantiniketan in Whitefield. With 3000 flats, 12,000 residents and more than 2000 registered voters, we are a powerhouse in terms of voter numbers, and we did everything to make sure we had a high voter turnout this election. To start with, we had…

Waste management has been an issue that the city has grappled with unsuccessfully in the past. But that might soon change with the Chennai Corporation’s blueprint for reduction of the quantum of waste sent to landfills under a new decentralized system to be implemented city-wide in the coming six months. Corporation Commissioner G Prakash gave us an overview of the changes that can be expected: What are the ongoing efforts in wet waste management in the city? The idea is to make the system of waste management as decentralized as possible. It will reduce the quantum of waste being handled…

This article is supported by SVP Cities of India Fellowship Bengaluru has always grappled with migration and population explosion. As a result, the city produces more than 5,000 tonnes of waste every day. With a faulty garbage transport system and contractor mafia, the city runs into garbage problem every now and then. The identified landfills around the city keep filling fast. Bengalureans have always tried to come up with waste-management systems, starting from garbage bins to clean up drives and from a no-bin to a three-bin system. Even so, garbage dumps became rampant in Bengaluru. Indiscriminate burning of garbage also became…

Friday morning dawned overcast and grey. There was an unmistakable stillness in the air.  Households were unusually quiet except for the blaring news channels. Apprehension had gripped the city of Kolkata by now. Fani, the most disastrous cyclone in two decades had already hit Orissa. Kolkata was slated to be its next target. By early morning, local news channels were high on theatrics and drama. Footages of windows shattering and tin roofs being blown away were replayed over and over again in different channels. Bengali anchors used big words and talked about ice age being the final manifestation of climate…

When Chandra, in his late sixties, decided to invest his life’s savings in a house in Hyderabad, the builder promised to hand over possession of the new home in December 2018. But with the project nowhere near completion, Chandra has now been promised possession in March 2020. And lives in the hope that if even that date is not kept, the builder will pay him interest on the amount he has deposited, as the new Real Estate Regulation Act (RERA) mandates. Passed with much fanfare in 2016, RERA was supposed to protect home buyers like Chandra from unscrupulous builders, especially…

The Fort High School in Chamarajpet, built in 1907, has lain dilapidated for years. Its alumni include freedom fighter H S Doresamy, cricketer G R Vishwanath, and even the former King of Mysore Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar. Sometime back, authorities even "repaired" the school in places with vitrified tiles, completely ignoring its importance as a heritage structure. Last year, the non-profit INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) took up a project to restore the building to its original state. It took about eight years for INTACH to document the building, get permission from DPI (Department of Public Instruction) to…

India is in the middle of Lok Sabha elections, and the entire nation is in the throes of emotional upheavals ranging from hope to despair, wrath to apathy, and a general heightened level of excitement. Every election brings hope to millions who believe their fortunes would turn around at least this time, but it has remained a gambler’s fallacy every time. Factors such as a young and rapidly-growing working-age population, increasing education and engineering skill levels that enhance growth of the manufacturing sector, and a growing middle-class that offers sustained growth of the consumer market, are factors that have propelled…

Controversy over the timing of release of a biopic on the head of government, 'main bhi chowkidar' caps found on vehicles of election commission vehicles, repeated instances of hate speech and communal references by leaders of contesting parties -- the number of violations of the 'Model Code of Conduct' ahead of elections has been quite mindboggling in these elections. But what is this 'code', really and what happens if parties or individuals decide to just flout the rules? The Model Code of Conduct (MCC) is a set of guidelines defining the dos and don’ts for the political parties and candidates…

‘People have the power’, American singer-songwriter Patti Smith wrote in 1988. It was one of the most powerful rock songs of all times. I think she could not have been more right. People indeed ‘have the power’, sometimes more than they realise, to change things around them and voice their opinion. These are just a few small ways in which you can bring about change. Stop blaming, start acting Those of you, who blamed the government for your city’s or neighbourhood’s problems, raise your hands. Just as I had thought, all of us, at least once in our lives, have…