GENRE: Voices

From: Citizens Concerned over the Proposed Steel Flyover An open letter to: The Bengaluru Vision Group Comprising - NR Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Sachin Bansal, Ramesh Ramanathan,Swati Ramanathan, V Ravichandar,Kalpana Kar, Mohandas Pai,Ramakanth, K Jairaj, RK Misra, BS Patil,Siddaiah, andVivek Menon cc: CMoK Siddaramaiah, Chairman; Bengaluru Development Minister KJ George, Co-Chairman; et al Members, The purpose of your group, was, according to an April 28, 2016, order of the Government of Karnataka: "... to improve life of Bengalureans by ushering in reforms in infrastructure and systems, resource mobilization, transparent governance, especially e-governance solutions, and increased participation of citizens, organizations and industry members." (Media reports) As concerned citizens,…

Railway Under-Bridge near Bengaluru's Shivananda Circle is no longer an ugly, stinking, dangerous thoroughfare for pedestrians. It has been transformed in five steps: Step 1 (June 2016): Railways staff + citizen volunteers de-poster, remove garbage and transform 80% of the RUB over three days. The Ugly Indian poster-repellent design was used, with striking bright colours, to brighten up an otherwise dark and dreary under-bridge place. See the album of Spotfix no 1 here: https://www.facebook.com/theugl.yindian/photos/… Step 2 (July 2016): BBMP fixes the footpath and repairs the pathways, including installing lights Step 3 (July 2016): Railways fixes the leaking roof and trims…

Have you wondered about the advertisement boards that we see on our roads and medians? Most of the time we curse them silently for spoiling the skyline or worse, blocking our line of vision while crossing the road, and then move on. We assume that some official body gave them an ill-conceived permission. When the number of such boards in Bellandur ward became too much to bear, to the extent that they were causing fatal accidents, we met the Special Commissioner for Property tax and Hoardings - V Rashmi Mahesh on March 27, 2016. And guess what we learnt? Of…

Cattles die from eating plastic. While plastic may seem almost indispensable in our daily lives, we tend to remain oblivious to the harm that we cause to animals and the environment by using this material in almost every aspect of our lives. Plastic is not bio-degradable in that it cannot be decomposed into simpler chemical constituents. It remains in the environment for thousands of years, endangering various life forms. Therefore, this year, the state government of Karnataka took the momentous decision to ban the use, sale and distribution of various items of plastic across the state. As per the notification,…

Saturday dawned for The Girl and promised fun on the run: Interview assistance in Jayanagar for Srinivas Alavilli's pet project, ICDS. Sponge and soak in the water management seminar at Church Street for Meera Kri's pet project, Citizen Matters. Discussion on Mid-day meals in public schools in Kanakapura with Ramamurthy (founder of Sikhshana), his pet project.   Halfway through recording the interview with the ICDS teacher, The Girl realised she needed to record attendance at the bathroom soon. As they finished up, she spied the Anganwadi bathroom outside on the open terrace. A rusty tin door hinged to a suspiciously…

In well-planned cities, the government makes the plans and the builders respond to that with project proposals - to build residential communities, commercial facilities, and so on. In our cities, the builders and individual plot owners make their proposals first, and the city then scrambles to figure out how to plan the city around that. The order in which we do things is itself wrong. Within this error, looking for solutions to 'manage' the way things are done is pointless. Which is why making the planning body for the city work - as per law - is important. People sometimes…

After those three informative quizzes, people are finally acknowledging that I do know a thing or two about pavements. Having proven my interest and understanding of this subject, I thought I should spread this knowledge far and wide. I know most people don’t understand my interest in this insignificant topic, but why must everyone think only about the big, important stuff that gets them attention? I am determined to show that even a humble pavement has a part to play in the whole orchestra, or symphony –  or whatever. You know what I mean. At this point, I have to…

As I was sitting in my drawing room, binge-watching a TV show, my mother sat right across the couch focused on her (almost full time) hobby – scrolling through Facebook. She announced, “Hey! there is a photo of you celebrating Diwali at Chitra aunty’s place. You are in that cute paavadai that you loathed back then, Look at your scorn”. I hate them, true! My mom had this stern belief that I would grow tall every single day and hence she would religiously buy dresses at least three sizes ahead of my actual one.  I ended up having frocks that…

The documents/ replies that I have received from various offices of BBMP in the last five months, to my RTI query on illegal hoardings, are piled up before me. Yet, they have no data that I asked for. Pic: Akshatha It has been precisely five months since I filed an RTI application with the Advertisement department of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) seeking information about legal and illegal advertisement hoardings in the city. (If you haven’t read the first piece you can read it here). And today as I write this second post about the status of my application, I…

Representative Image. Photo courtesy: Subhashish Panigrahi via Wikimedia Commons 10-Sep-2016. Train number 17604 Kachiguda Express. I was on my way to Hyderabad from Bangalore. It was around 11.15 pm, I woke up from my already disturbed sleep for two reasons.  Firstly, the roof lights were on. Secondly, amidst the quiet humming noise of the AC sleeper coach and the constant titak-titak-titak-titak from the running train, I heard someone coughing.  When I opened my eyes, I saw a lady in burqa seated on the side lower berth with a man sitting next to her. The man was holding a kerchief to…