Kasa Muktha

Lalbagh - my beautiful slice of heaven was taken over for the past fifteen days for the flower show. A 250-year-old garden on 240 acres, with one of the most spectacular collections of trees in the world was trashed. Very disheartened to see the crowd fill the place with garbage even though there were dustbins kept all over the place. The heritage rock - a three hundred billion year old rock which is the major attraction of Lalbagh, was filled with plastic covers flying all over the place and soft drink bottles. Shame on us people! A so-called hi-tech city…

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India has notified the E-waste [Management] Rules, 2016 which is effect from 01.10.2016. For implementation of these Rules, the Central Pollution Control Board has notified “implementation of guidelines for E-waste Management Rules, 2016”. The Board had issued authorization to 27 collection centers, 42 dismantlers, 24 recyclers and 14 recyclers/dismantlers. To review the implementation of E-waste (Management) Rules, 2016 in the state, meeting was conveyed by the Chairman of the Board on 12.6.2017. The representatives of the Central Pollution Control Board and the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change were…

25 years after the 74th Constitutional Amendment (Nagarapalika Act) prescribed effective citizen participation through ward committees, to bring in accountability of the local councillor to the community, an opportunity is at last being given to citizens to get into ward committees.  Till now, if at all the ward committees were constituted; councillors were themselves nominating the individual members and registered associations who would sit on ward committees.  It was not surprising that the ward committees used to be filled with the councillors’ own party-men and cronies, defeating the purpose of the ward committees. The two seats for registered associations used…

Being a Public Policy student from Mount Carmel College and currently working as an intern in Co Media Lab, I got an assignment of talking to a Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA), to understand how MLAs manage their expenses. I chose to talk to Priya Krishna, the MLA from Govindrajanagar constituency. He has been holding this position since 2009, re-elected in 2013 elections. I assumed that an MLA, being a public figure, needs to give an appointment to meet him. Last week of April went in vain, as I was trying to reach Priya Krishna's Personal Assistant (PA), one Mr.…

  'Connect with Nature' is the theme for this year's World Environment Day. Pic: Bhoomi College World Environment Day is here again, with the theme “Connecting people to nature” this year. The motto is to “get outdoors and into nature, and appreciate its beauty and to think about how we are part of nature and how intimately we depend on it.” Like every year, this year too many organisations have planned several programmes in Bengaluru to celebrate the environment day on June 5th and even on the days before or after the environment day. If you are interested in participating…

In recent times, two newspapers (Deccan Chronicle and Times of India) have featured the Dry Waste Collection Centres of Bengaluru, in the guise of an 'expose,' leaving tan ignorant reader with a distasteful feeling with the use of dramatic phrases - to name a few, ‘Misuse by waste-pickers’, ‘Waste of public money by allowing the centers to become money spinners for private enterprises,’ ’Dark side of the DWCC underbelly.’ One of the articles has quoted the source as a study / report done by two citizens.  As an SWM practitioner working closely with the BBMP and with the several NGOs /private…

There comes a time in your life when it doesn’t matter what comfort zone you are in, you just want to move on and do something in life — something for the society; something to better the lives of others; something that everyone cannot do. This doesn’t happen to all, but Kalpana Kar saw it happen to her. Once she left her corporate comforts behind, incorporating professionalism in local governance became her new passion in life. Kalpana began her corporate career in TATA administrative services. She worked in Tata Unisys and Titan Industries. She also helped her husband in the…

A picture, it is said, is worth a thousand words. So it was, with reference to the recent inauguration of the ‘Kasa mukta’ (garbage free) initiative, at Freedom Park in mid-July. While several thousands of words have been written and spoken about garbage, and about the authorities’ failure in cleaning up the mess, one picture said it all, very eloquently. (The Hindu, 25 July). It showed a horrendous pile of used plates, hundreds of them, tossed on the ground at the Freedom Park, at the end of the meeting by the ‘invitees’ including VIPs. The participants could not care about…

The programme was launched at Freedom Park in presence of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Food and Civil Supplies Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao, Bangalore In-charge Minister Ramalinga Reddy and others. Pic courtesy: BBMP The need to get rid of the tag of ‘garbage city’ finally seems to have made its way into the policies of government. Kasa Muktha ward drive was launched at Freedom Park on Wednesday, 24 July 2013, with the garbage clearance machinery geared up with 250 trained, dedicated Pourakarmikas and garbage contractors willing to make the programme a hit. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and BBMP Commissioner M Lakshminarayana kickstarted the…