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Press release on the "Namma Kere, Namma Bengaluru" Workshop (provided by Save Bangalore Lakes Trust) Bangalore today is sitting on a silent time bomb of depleting and degrading quality of sources of water. One of the solutions lies in restoration of lakes for recharging its ground water, meeting water needs of the city and also in keeping its climate cool. Save Bangalore Lake Trust (SBLT) is a group of concerned citizens working for restoration, protection and maintenance of lakes in Bangalore. It aims to bring different lake groups or trusts in Bangalore on a common platform for a joint initiative,…

Did you know that so many amenities exist in the Bangalore City Railway Station? Here is the list of amenities provided at the City Railway Station. Such things as, "Comesum is a 24hr multi cuisine food plaza located near the entrance to the foot over bridge. Passengers can order food from here to be delivered to their respective coaches by calling 56904478."   and "RETIRING ROOMS AND DORMITORIES - These are located on the first and second floors of the station building, above platform 1.There are 27 rooms in all, including 8 AC rooms, 18 Non-AC rooms and 1 room…

You can complain to Health Department if you find ambulances charging more than 10 rupee per km. Pic courtesy: Wikimedia Commons Lakshmamma, a domestic worker and a resident of Anjanagara, did not know where to take her sister Shanti, who suddenly complained of severe abdominal pain during late night hours. She did not know which ambulance service to call, as a private ambulance service she found refused to ply during late night hours. Charges for another service were over Rs 3,000 for just two kilometres, to a decent hospital on Magadi Road. Similar situation was also faced by another woman,…

The Managing Director of BESCOM, Mr Manivannan, has been spearheading a movement on FaceBook, to bring various facets of this hitherto opaque Government organization to the public. Various initiatives have been launched, and the latest is his attempt to describe how electricity makes it into our homes from where it is generated. Here is the process, in his own words: HOW does electricity, generated at the Raichur Thermal Power Plant (RTPS) come to your home in Bangalore? It's interesting and important to know how electricity reaches your home. It may explain you why the supply is cut off at times,…

Here is a new government which has an opportunity to think long term as well as an opportunity to bring in far-ranging changes.In terms of infrastructure, there should be importance given to commuter rail issue. In the next one year, with the Centre and State having the same party running the governments, it is a good opportunity to try and push the issue in a concrete manner and get it into the railway budget and the system. The commuter rail system will have Bangalore develop in different ways along the railway tracks and allow for much more access for people…

Leo Saldanha is a full-time Coordinator of Bangalore-based Environment Support Group. He is an expert in the areas of Environmental Law and Policy, Decentralisation, Urban Planning and a variety of Human Rights and Development-related issues, working across many sectors for over a decade. He is a keen campaigner on critical environmental and social justice issues and has guided several campaigns demanding evolution of progressive laws and effective action. He has supported various distressed communities to secure justice through public interest litigations and advocacy efforts. He has argued as party in person several public interest litigations, many of which have resulted…

In part-I, I argued that our planners, politicians and administrators put Bengaluru's development on steroids over the last 10 years, the way farmers sometimes do for agriculture, only to find that the soil dies later.I also argued that we have built a Bengaluru in the form of a giant shining saucer that is suspended at 10,000 feet above the real land of this city. There is one single pipe holding up the saucer and through this pipe, water, services, resources and low-income jobs are sucked through to the fast-paced life above. The pipe though is now bursting at the seams,…

In the run up to elections in Karnataka, a nationally telecast TV news programme last weekend focussed on the massive deterioration of civic life in Bengaluru. On display was the breakdown of garbage management, water supply, rise of the contractor and tanker mafia and the link to politicians, the state's political parties becoming personality-led factions and in all, a capital city and the silicon valley of India hopelessly caught in a disastrous spiral. Citizen Matters was interviewed for the telecast as well. It ended though with a hopeful note that when voters have a chance to reverse things. (Headlines Today,…

The Chief Electoral Officer published a new set of voters' lists on 28 Jan 2013. Download of the voter lists using a software program, and data extraction from them, was since disabled by converting the files to image files, but Prajalytics, a software company, had already downloaded the files for 27 Bangalore constituencies manually and extracted voter records. The data quoted in succeeding paragraphs is based on the voter lists of 27 constituencies of Bangalore city downloaded on 28th January 2013. Violation of Data ModelThe Instruction Manual for Standardization of Electoral Roll Database (Ver 1.0) published by Election Commission of…

The Electoral Rolls of 27 constituencies of Bangalore have serious errors and omissions. When the authorities did not react to repeated feedbacks and request to correct anomalies, a PIL was filed in the High Court of Karnataka. The Chief Justice agreed with the issues raised in the petition and directed the CEO to correct various data errors and also to restore illegitimately deleted voters. After reported efforts at cleansing the lists, the CEO published a new set of voters' lists on 28th January, 2013. However, soon afterwards, download of the voter-lists was disabled. Prajalytics, a software company, had downloaded the…