GENRE: Voices

About six months ago, the Chief Minister announced, with the usual fanfare and ribbon cutting, that the city would be 'garbage-free in 6 months'. Since then, regularly on this wall, I have been counting down the clock to this deadline. Now he's about to give us the Christmas gift we've all been waiting for - one more promise to do something, probably in 6 more months. It was always clear that this would not happen on time. But rather than be a skeptic from the beginning, I decided to wait. I even offered to help some BBMP corporators in South…

Kudos to the Parliament and the Government for passing the Lokpal bill today. It goes along with a bouquet of legislation to combat corruption, starting with the Right to Information Act. Though Lokpal is a powerful tool, we still need to address the causes of the disease of corruption - electoral funding! 1. The reality of direct elections today is that large sum of money is required to reach out to the electorate and provide them with democratic information relating to their electoral choices. The official limits upon election expenses are irrational, barely meeting the appropriate levels of expenditure and…

Last week, on a social networking site, I put up a post about my cook and her barely-18 year-old daughter. The girl had just completed a sponsored and very expensive beauticians' course at a top city beauty training institute. I had hoped she would start working and earn a steady income, thereby helping her hardworking mother who is a cook in two households. Instead, her mother got her married. It is not too difficult to predict that the girl will soon become a young mother herself. If she is not allowed to use her training, why she may even end…

I have been terribly busy this month. I have a wee pup at home who is taking over all my time. I have been visiting CUPA during weekdays to work with troubled dogs there. One of the days, just as I was finishing my work, the guys at the shelter were standing around a little black mound and discussing how to transport that mound. I had arrived in a car and offered to do the honours. The mound turned out to be a listless little pup – the smallest pup I have ever seen. I gingerly picked up the pup…

Dear Reader, Entrepreneur’s Corner is pleased to feature this interview of Srikanth Muralidhara, Co-Founder of the Bangalore-based Decision Sciences Company, Flutura Solutions, that focuses on M2M (machine to machine) and Big Data analytics. The company, started by Krishnan Raman, Srikanth Muralidhara and Derick Jose has recently made news, by being the first company to be invested in by The Hive India. This is a Fund anchored by the siblings Amit and Arihant of the Patni family, set up to invest in the area of data analytics. Srikanth is the managing partner and the Head of Customer Success at Flutura. He…

The cancellation of the much awaited event, the fortnight-long Bangalore Book Fair, this year is a reflection of the state government’s inability to understand that good reading habits are important for its denizens. The fair at Palace Grounds was cancelled at the last-minute after the state Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR) discovered a legal point on the venue in the light of the long-running battle between the heirs of the erstwhile Mysore rulers and the government on the ownership of Bangalore Palace Grounds. The purpose of any book fair is to create awareness about book culture in the…

This is not a crime thriller but a true story. Right in the heart of metropolitan city Bengaluru, with its 30 lakh vehicles (at last count) for a population of 90 lakh plus 1,300 new vehicles registered every day, a person dies. And no one cares! Muniyappa didn’t die of infection or injuries. He died of malnutrition and hunger, even as the parliament was passing the historic Food Security Bill. Rather, he was murdered - by a government that focuses on GDP growth, FDI and “market reforms” rather than the poor and destitute, who are also human, and for whom…

Can we really change our colour-conscious culture? I have a good friend Monisha, an ardent gardener. She grows and sells ornamental plants so she is out in the sun a lot. Which means her fair skin gets a bronzed glow quite often. She doesn't mind that at all. What irks her, however, is the reaction she gets from friends and extended family. “When they see me, they invariably exclaim, 'Oh, you've become so tanned!' I love darker skin tones and I really don't care how tanned I get. So why do other people,” she wonders. Why indeed? There's this remarkable…

I am staying in a complex called Purva Panorama on B G Road Bangalore where we have 650 apartments. The time when no one was bothered or thought of doing segregation, we, Purva Panoramites, were way ahead in the process of segregation. We took our first baby step of Solid Waste Management in June 2011, right after a beautiful presentation by N S Ramakanth in our complex. Although there were not too many people present in the meeting as usual, we didn't waste time. We started  the project with just a few people in our team. Me, S.Venkatesh Kini,  Alok…

I was tickled to see these two jostling for space on the roads of Bangalore... An auto and an automobile. Life is full of highs and lows, all existing together!