GENRE: Voices

Just a few months ago – on 23 February 2013– a fancy, “sky kissing” (ambara chumbana) clock tower, the tallest in the state, was installed with much fanfare at a cost of over Rs 90 lakhs (by a cash-strapped city administration). The fancy clock not only showed the time, it was supposed to change colour for each day of the week - orange for Tuesdays, blue, green etc. Go take a look now – the ‘colour changing’ bit has not lasted even a few months. It remains orange forever. Spend money on a 'colour-changing’ fancy contraption, pay the contractor, and…

Chief Election Officer of Karnataka published a new version of Electoral Rolls on 3 November 2013, on his website. My observations here are limited to the electoral rolls of 28 constituencies of Bengaluru. Data quality of the rolls has improved compared with the version published in May 2013. 240 of the 370 voters below age 18 were infants at age 0 and age 1. They have all grown up and become 18 to 98 year old in the new list. Interestingly 57% of them are 23 year old now, ready to register in matrimonial sites. Did the AEROs check the…

The Mayor feels IT industry has not done enough for Bengaluru. Sir, here are four things that IT can do for the city quickly. (a) Digitise the property records in the city, and host them online, so that everyone can see who is paying taxes, who is not, and how much. Likewise, digitise the records of government properties, spatially, and put them up online. (b) Digitise the records of all public works, including the history of works on each road, and put them up. (c) Digitise file movement in the BBMP, so that the routine work of the agency becomes…

Sadananda Maiya. Pic courtesy: http://basavanagudinationaldegreecollege.blogspot.in It's known that Bangalore is Karnataka’s capital, Garden city, Silicon Valley, IT-BT hub of India, historically. Culturally, religiously, traditionally rich, educational hub tourists’ delight, cosmopolitan city ever growing in leaps and bounds in every aspect beyond one’s imagination, contributed to a galaxy of scientists, sports persons, actors, doctors, musicians and much more distinguished professionals. People from all over India and world jump at the first opportunity to come to Bangalore for whatever reasons and enjoy the social life it offers all irrespective of their vernacular background, culture, taste and lifestyle. Bangalore has great weather all…

I am off for Diwali. Every year, we chose to spend Diwali in the lap of nature and pass up on the revelry in the city. This suits us and our dogs best. But for those of you who are going to be in the thick of all the celebrations, it is time to remember that Diwali is potentially a very stressful time for dogs. In my last two posts I wrote about the effects of stress on your dogs and how your dog may express it. Today, before I take off, I want to leave you with some tips…

About two years ago, I said to a few young people that 'if you do the following seven things EVERY WEEK without fail for the next FULL YEAR for only A FEW MINUTES A DAY, you'll be so successful you'll never have to worry too much about your career and other things. I'm not sure if any of them is trying it out, but this morning in some other context I was reminded of this. I call these the seven 4-letter words that guarantee success. Keep in mind, you must do this EVERY WEEK, no exceptions (health issues apart). You…

In my last post I spoke of what stress is. In this post I want to describe how a dog could react under stress. We have often heard of the “flight or fight” response to fear or stress. In dogs there are actually, at least 4 responses to fear – Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fiddle. In this blog I want to describe each of these. Flight: This is the easiest response to recognise as fear. We see a dog running away, with it’s tail tucked between it’s legs and we know it’s fear. During Diwali, it’s not unheard of for…

We spend a lot of time talking about national politics in India, with the general elections in 2014 being a subject of conversations for well over a year now. Conversations on state level politics take up the remainder of our time. In contrast, many of the problems that we face in Bengaluru on a day to day basis are municipal in nature: be it the lack of good roads and public transport, unreliable power supply, unsafe drinking water or garbage that lines our streets. Who becomes your next corporator or local council member is perhaps as important as who becomes…

Online voter roll registrations in Beengaluru were closed for sometime, on September 26, 2013. Those who logged in to the Karnataka Election Commission website received a message, saying that the voter registration will reopen after the publishing of the draft electoral roll. Now it is that time of the cycle when the draft rolls will be out soon and registrations will re-open. Karnataka Chief Election Officer Anil Kumar Jha talks about the Election Commission's plans, in an interview with Citizen Matters. Voters registration was suppossed to be open from August 10 till November 11, 2013. Why did it close now?…

Problems in Bengaluru • There is no leadership of the city. Most of the important public services are in the hands of the State government, which is more concerned with its State-level priorities than with the city’s. Mayors serve short, uneventful terms. • There is hardly any planning. BDA does no more than zoning of areas for different uses, and even this is very poorly enforced. Other agencies plan-as-they-go, without any reference to a regional or city-level perspective. There is no commonality of jurisdiction among agencies, either. • The legal steps (outlined in the 74th Constitution Amendment Act, 1992) to…