GENRE: Voices

Fun fact: Cooking oil, especially the widely used Sunflower oil, has seen a big jump in price because of the Russian-Ukraine war. Why? India consumes roughly 2.5mt of sunflower oil annually. And much of this is imported from Ukraine. India only produces 50,000 tonnes of it. The war has disrupted that entire trade. So here’s a thought. Incentivise urban communities and farmers to take to growing sunflower. That could lead to being more ‘atma nirbhar’ and a big ‘vote for local’. And who knows, the process may even create jobs. A commodity desperately needed by millions of urban workers across…

In 2021, Mumbai was ranked 5th in global vehicular congestion by the TomTom Traffic Index. Rates of car ownership in the city are growing — at roughly 10% per annum — against the backdrop of traffic congestion and a severe lack of parking space. For every vehicle in the city, at least three locations for parking are required. As car ownership increases, the need for parking spaces will grow three times that rate, roughly 30%.  In apprehension of such a situation, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in January 2021 put together a committee of 15 experts and citizens to form the…

The state government is back to what it does best – renaming Chennai roads. There is of course the other thing they do equally well – unnecessary ‘beautification’ of neighbourhoods but we will not go into that. At least not just now. Since these are times when being critical of anybody in power usually means inviting the accusation that we are in the pay of the Opposition, let us assure everyone that we were equally critical when the previous regime did the same. Overall, the road-renaming exercise is one of the most wasteful activities possible, but State Governments do not…

Once upon a time in Delhi, even when summer day temperatures hovered over 40 degrees C, the city would cool down considerably after sunset, bringing the minimum temperature in the range of mid 20 degrees C. But what we have seen during the recent spate of heat waves is not even remotely reminiscent of that. Today, the city does not cool down after sunset: the heat exhaust from millions of air conditioners in residences and offices and central air conditioning in commercial and institutional spaces raises minimum temperature to or above 30 degrees C. According to Avikal Somvanshi, programme manager of…

Mumbai has had a rough start to the summer. Along with the rest of the country, a heat wave in the city began in March, as the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) Santacruz observatory recorded a temperature of 39.4 degrees Celsius (°C). A lack of pre-monsoon showers and warm, dry winds from northwest India have been the causes, driven by climate change. Another three heat waves followed, when the peak season for them, May, is yet to pass. The high minimum and maximum temperatures have meant that the city has spent the majority of the two months without any respite. This…

Shilpa, a fellow educator, and I have been teaching at an under-resourced government school in Thyagaraya Nagar for the past two years. We started in August 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic. The students we teach are first generation learners from an urban slum community in Thyagaraya Nagar, and their parents are daily wage workers, house help and roadside vendors. One of the things we noticed was that there is hardly any parental involvement in the child’s educational journey. The only time parents are called in is to hand over documents, sign applications, or for one-way parent-teacher meetings,…

As Mumbai returns to normal after the COVID pandemic, offices and schools have reopened. With them, the number of commuters travelling through public transport is steadily approaching pre-pandemic levels. 30 lakh people boarded the BEST buses daily in April 2022, and the number will soon cross 35 lakh. 70-72 lakh passengers travelled on the suburban railway every day, just 6-8 lakh shy of the 2019 figures. The familiar scenes of congestion have returned. Mumbai’s suburban railways are known for the often dangerous rush hour, for which the term ‘super dense crush load’ was coined. Over 16 people stand chest-to-chest on each square…

Bengaluru city makes up only 6% of the Arkavathy river basin area, but is a major contributor to the river's pollution. Similar is the case with Vrushabhavathi river. Wastewater from industrial areas like Peenya, along with domestic sewage, is choking these rivers. Downstream, these rivers join the Cauvery, from which water is pumped up to meet the city's needs. This effectively means that the wastewater dumped by the city comes right back to it. This was illustrated in a presentation made by Nirmala Gowda, co-founder of the paani.earth website that maps the rivers of Karnataka. Nirmala was speaking at a…

Even as we write this, the blaze at Delhi's Bhalswa waste dump — a colossal mountain of unsorted and unsegregated waste in the national capital — continues to thwart the efforts of the Delhi Fire Services personnel as they fight the flames raging since April 26th. Of course, such fires at waste dump sites are not uncommon; this is already the third such incident this summer after earlier outbreaks at the Ghazipur landfill site. Methane gas emissions during decomposition of the dumped waste in unaerobic conditions, combined with high air temperatures, make these sites veritable tinderboxes. Sometimes, reckless or deliberate…

In July 2021, Brookefields Layout, a community East of Marathahalli in Bengaluru, finally got its roads asphalted. Within a month, BESCOM - the electric utility, informed the community that they wanted to dig a beautiful, brand-new road to lay their 11KV lines. Prior to asphalting, we had asked several utilities (including BESCOM) if they had any pending work on the road. Many took the opportunity to lay their lines; the road asphalting itself was delayed to accommodate new gas lines, optical cables, telephone cables, water lines, and more. BESCOM said they had no plans; for them to now say they…