GENRE: Voices

Ten weeks have flown by and my internship with Citizen Matters has come to a quick end. Tomorrow, I will board a flight, but I will not be leaving India just yet. I am looking forward to three weeks of travel around the subcontinent to see what else this country has to offer. The author on the beach in Goa. Pic: Kate Clark But soon enough, I will be struggling to nap on 16-hour flight back to Dallas, Texas. When I picture exiting the Dallas Fort-Worth airport, driving a few miles toward my parent’s house in suburban Texas, I can…

Newspapers announced with glee and celebrated the news that the Metro construction between Silk Board and KR Puram was going to go ahead and will be “fast tracked”. On Twitter, corporate honchos part of the Bengalulru Blueprint Group, congratulated the government for taking the decision. Source: https://twitter.com/kiranshaw/status/776241398622228480 But it was with a fair degree of alarm and shock that the already harassed lot that commutes to the Outer Ring Road read the news. According to this news, Metro Phase 2 construction in this region would now be from Byappanahalli till KR Puram (that line will continue towards Whitefield). Then from KR…

N Manjunath Prasad, Commissioner of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), believes in minimum contact but maximum governance. He is from 1994 IAS cadre. In an interview with Cherry Agarwal, a student of Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media (IIJNM), he talks about a wave of digitisation to put information on public domain, the long term plans of the BBMP, the challenges he faces and more. BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad. Pic courtesy: BBMP Commissioner FB page How has your journey been since 1994 to being the BBMP Commissioner? In 1994 after getting into the IAS I was allotted the West…

What should Bengaluru - institutions and its citizens - do in the immediate run and the long run, considering the Cauvery dispute and the limits to water scenario? Just remember that only a third among us, or maybe half, are in the Cauvery basin, the rest are not part of the Water Tribunal process. This city has been built on a ridge and in the basin of two rivers, though many of us may not even be able to name the rivers into which Bengaluru empties its sewage. Consider this – we are pumping 1400 million litres of water per…

On Monday, (September 12 2016) as I was watching the prime-time news on Kannada TV channels, my child walked in. Sitting beside me, she watched the televised show of miscreants vandalising various places. Suddenly she exclaimed: 'Ammaa!' The TV showed the vandals ransacking an Adyar Anand Bhavan outlet, probably on Mysore Road. She asked me, 'Amma, so there won't be Adyar Anand Bhavan anymore?' I reassured her, 'Yes there will be. These are all temporary problems. Malleshwaram's A2B is intact, so you don't need to worry.' A2B is her favourite hotel and has been a lifesaver for us on the…

Another year, another bandh. It feels like 1991 all over again. Those empty roads, those days of being at home on weekdays, having to converse with parents in Kannada outside home. But yes, 1991 was definitely worse. There was news of people moving back to Tamil Nadu weeks before the final order. There was a build up. When the final verdict came and cities erupted, there was a sense of inevitability to it. Then there were shoot-at-sight orders and cops milling in front of the house in Chamarajpet. We camped on the terrace, more curious than worried – at 11 you had a…

Water shortage has been a matter of serious concern in Bengaluru.  While the city contributes about 50% of the state’s GDP, this problem, if not corrected timely, could seriously threaten the revenues of the state government and the IT/BT investment that the city has been able to attract.  The population of Bengaluru is also increasing substantially. As against a population of 85 lakhs in 2011, it is expected to be around 188 lakhs by 2030, which will further exacerbate the city’s water supply woes. What’s the scenario in Bengaluru?  The piped water supplied by the Bangalore Water Supply & Sewage…

It was an enlightening thing to go through the vitriol and acrimony of the messages during the bandh, and in the last few days.   As someone whose family has been in farming, I urge all of you to think about supporting farmers every day of the year. The easiest and most effective way to do so is by eating local produce -- from millets to leafy greens to gourds. Traditionally, native grains and vegetables have been varieties that have used very little water to grow, and are extremely healthy for us. Our state's cuisine include staples like ragi and…

‘Swacch Bharat!’ We have seen a lot of hype about this programme in media but what is the reality? Of course, many things are happening in little pockets around the country, about which we read or hear. It does give us some hope that some day, maybe after half a century, we may see some difference at least in certain localities. However, as an individual, my experience has been a bit disappointing. Firstly, the once beautiful garden city of Bengaluru is turning into a city of concrete, garbage, polluted water bodies and chaos at a very fast pace!  Cleaning up…

The CBSE action against NPS schools is a classic study of everything that is wrong in the way we manage education. Without going into the specifics of NPS itself, we should be able to see the wrinkles in the canvas. a. First, the public school system is bad. To be precise, it is one of the WORST IN THE WORLD. It is so bad that even poor people are fleeing it, and putting children in private schools at their own cost. In Karnataka, only one out of three children who depend on the state pass high school, and even among…