GENRE: Voices

There is a specific pattern to the spread of COVID-19, one that’s tied to the way in which global supply chains have been built over the last few decades and where people live and work. If the 1918 “Spanish Influenza” epidemic in the past was spread by soldiers returning home from World War 1, urbanisation and globalisation have had a huge say in how COVID-19 has spread across the world. It is also for this reason that it has proved hard to tackle – global supply chains, industries and cities (where more than half of humanity lives) cannot simply be…

Once the lockdown lifts, how do we facilitate Bengalureans’ travel across the city? With the economy coming to a complete standstill due to the lockdown, transport needs as well as options have temporarily reduced to almost nothing. While several companies in the IT and services industry are looking at work-from-home as an option going forward, that will not be the same with manufacturing, bio-technology and establishment sectors.   However, if you look at the employment distribution industries, establishments and street vendors account for about 85% of the total employment in the city.  The big question is once the city opens how…

RJ Radha from Radio Active 90.4 talks to Sreedevi from the Bangalore HIV Forum and Prabhanand Hegde from the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR) and highlights the problems faced by the People Living with HIV (PLHIV) community in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. They discuss solutions being implemented to help the community cope. Sreedevi says the main difficulty for PLHIV is the inability to step out and buy necessary medication during lockdown. To add to this, the people of this community find themselves out of work due to the lockdown, and the prices of the tablets they need…

While I have not witnessed anything like this in my lifetime, as a social scientist and as an entrepreneur I can see that the phobia has gone to another level. And I believe this is because we live in an 'Information Age' where every piece of information is a hyperbole, with global implications. We are overloaded with information, it's driving us insane. It's reducing our sense of wisdom, patience, kindness and empathy. It's making us all information addicts. But that said, the physical reality of it is far scarier. For instance, I stay in a huge, beautiful, green society in…

Karnataka’s Urban Development Department, through the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT), has prepared a draft Parking Policy for Bengaluru city. Citizens can send their feedback on the policy to DULT until May 15. DULT says the policy has been formulated to achieve the following goals in a systematic and time bound manner: Move from chaotic parking to well-organised parkingMove from free parking to paid parkingMove from government-driven parking supply to market-driven parking supply and managementMove from passive and weak enforcement of parking regulations to active management of parking demand. Comments on the proposed parking policy The policy aims to…

As we cover the COVID-19 outbreak in the city, we also asked various individuals, citizen groups and RWAs to explain how they have dealt with the COVID-19 crisis. In this piece, a senior citizen relates his experience during the lockdown. I'm not at all affected by the lockdown necessitated by the Covid-19 scare because, as a retired person, I am already under some sort of a lockdown. However, in the present situation, I am unable to perform some of my routine activities like going to the bank, park, temples and making occasional visits to other places.  So far, I have not…

Senior citizens are more vulnerable and face specific challenges during the COVID-19 lockdown. In this series, some seniors discuss how they’ve been dealing with the situation. In the second part of the series, a senior citizen writes on the solutions he found to cope with lockdown. In less than six months since its appearance on planet earth, COVID-19 has killed over two lakh humans, apart from infecting over three million more and handing out death threats to the rest of humanity. Intense efforts are on to prevent its spread, help those infected, find a cure and develop a vaccine against…

Senior citizens are more vulnerable and face specific challenges during the COVID-19 lockdown. In this series, some seniors discuss how they’ve been dealing with the situation. In the first part of the series, a senior citizen describes the new challenges that have descended on her. While the media has focused on the woes of migrant workers trekking hundreds of kilometres to return to their native villages after their earnings dried up in the wake of the virus pandemic, not much has been written or said about the hassles that middle-class families have had to face, especially the elderly. Take me.…

The budget for the FY 2020 – 21 has been presented through video conferencing due to the lockdown announced by the State Government.  Let us see the figures presented in the budget. The total budget is for Rs. 10897.58 crore which is 6.5% lower than the previous year’s budget. But the more important revelation in the budget document is the revised figures for the previous year 2019-20. The revenue receipts are just 60% of the budgeted figure. In other words, against the projection of Rs. 11,652.93 crore they have been able to raise only Rs. 7067.86 crore.  When its performance…

Ever since the first national lockdown to fight the battle with Coronavirus was imposed, starting March 25, 2020, questions over labour and labouring have been discussed and deliberated upon with an intensity hardly ever witnessed before in modern India. The trigger for it has been the hapless situation of migrant labour, the working poor and daily wage earners, evident across the country. This is an especially unique historical moment, because culturally speaking, we have never really valued labour or given it the dignity it deserves, even if we pay lip service to the same. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought…