GENRE: Voices

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…

The Chennai floods in 2015 caused damage worth Rs 8481 crore and claimed many lives. In 2021, floods ravaged the city once again, but the effects weren’t quite as bad as 2015. While estimates of the economic damage haven’t been cited; the city was at a standstill. Power had been cut, infrastructure damaged, and the collective sanity of the residents was at a low. These were dark times. Oddly, only two years before, in 2019, Chennai faced an acute water shortage because of a monsoon that failed to spill any rain. This chain of events illustrates a water paradox arising…

A childhood memory of devastation caused by a cyclone that hit India’s east coast way back in 1971, left such a lasting impression on the six-year-old boy that he decided to devote his life learning about the weather and predicting unusual weather events like Cyclones. Today, that six-year-old has risen to be the 25th Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Dr Mrityunjay Mohapatra, also known as the “Cyclone Man”. Dr Mohapatra received international recognition for accurately predicting the path of the ferocious cyclonic storm Phailin that hit the Orissa coast in 1999. As head of the IMD’s cyclone…

According to an environment status report (ESR) released by the BMC for the year 2020-2021, 72.6% of the waste generated by residents is organic. A major chunk of this organic waste is taken to dumping grounds, which has caused recurring fires due to the high levels of methane gas it produces. Despite the BMC’s diktat to segregate wet waste at source, the implementation of it in buildings remains poor. Lack of incentives is considered to be the primary cause behind lack of focus on sustainable waste management. Not all share the apathy, though. The “Zero Garbage Project” at Surabhi Housing…

With the recently concluded elections, Chennai has  local body representatives for the first time in six years. While much has changed in the past few years, avenues for engagement of Chennaiites with the local government has remained limited. Could this scenario change with the election of the ward councillors? How can residents be involved in local governance and demand accountability from their local representatives? Citizen Matters hosted a webinar with a diverse panel on the ways in which Chennaiites can track the work of their ward councillors and the avenues available for their participation. The panel comprised M Radhakrishnan of…

April 2nd was a big day for Mumbai. After 8 long years, the blue line of Mumbai's metro was getting 2 new additions: the yellow Line 2A and red Line 7. On the shared Dahisar metro station, Line 2A left to Dahanukarwadi, Kandivali. Parallely, the metro on Line 7 left for Aarey in Goregaon, covering the extent of Phase 1. With the upcoming Phase 2, the 18.5 km and 16.5 km long lines will travel 30 stations bewteen them, connecting DN Nagar, Andheri West and Andheri East on the older Line 1. The lines are a clear rival for the…