OPINION

CIVIC, a non-governmental organisation in Bengaluru has registered its concerns regarding new garbage tenders published in June 2015 by the BBMP. Here is the summary of the letter sent by CIVIC to the BBMP Administrator T M Vijayabhaskar. Overall concerns 1.     Outsourcing of garbage disposal to contractors needs to be discontinued and contract PKs regularised CIVIC feels that outsourcing of garbage disposal by BBMP to contractors should be discontinued as garbage disposal is a “core” and “perennial” activity of BBMP which cannot be outsourced as per the Contract Labour (Abolition & Regulation) Act. CIVIC suggests that the current contract workers…

Bengaluru has seen many experiments in urban space management. Tender SURE is one of them that is hitting headlines of late. The idea of Tender SURE was born when the Bangalore City Connect Foundation (BCCF) funded and co-ordinated the design of the Tender SURE concept in the year 2009 and implemented a pilot project on Vittal Mallya Road. After the pilot project’s implementation, the BCCF joined hands with the Government of Karnataka (GoK), the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL), to implement the project on a few more roads. The technical assistance for the…

Screengrab of media coverage of the DK Ravi case. Collage: Ganga Madappa Add one frustrated public and the death of an honest officer in ‘mysterious circumstances’ and a system perceived as corrupt, and what does it equal? Mass speculation, sensationalised reporting, and public outrage. D K Ravi was an accomplished man. He came from a poor background, educated himself and achieved a position of power. Depending on which media outlet one follows, one can assume that he was an honest man, fighting against corruption, or a man involved in infidelity and deceit. However, there is no doubt that the public…

Way back in 2007, a Comprehensive Traffic and Transport Proposal was given by Government of India. As per that, we had the Phase 1 Metro in Bengaluru, which is now being constructed, feeder Monorail / Light Rail, Bus Rapid Transit and Suburban Rail. This can be found here: CTTP 2007 From 2007 till 2015, the population has grown tremendously. So many vehicles have added to Bangalore Roads. New comers to Bangalore, especially bachelors who come from other cities come with some clothes  and documents after they get their first job or in search of the job. Initially they manage with…

From Sureshbhai Patel, who was left paralysed due to excessive physical force from overzealous policemen in the USA for being a “coloured” human being walking on the streets of a xenophobic town, to Nirbhaya who was brutally raped in a moving bus in New Delhi, it is apparent there is an erosion of the basic and universal values that we perhaps tend to take for granted. It is left to us to salvage this state of anomie by inculcating in children universal values such as respect, compassion, treating people the way one wants to be treated and helping those who…

Even as the State government is gearing up to implement the Akrama Sakrama scheme that allows the regularisation of the building byelaw and certain land use violation in urban areas including Bengaluru, the new rules have raised several concerns. While a section of the civic society opposes the concept of regularisation as a whole, a few others find lacunae in the new rules which they say might prove disastrous if the scheme is implemented. In fact, there are serious doubts over the new rules of being big developer-friendly, rather than being people-friendly. There is not much difference between the 2007…

Another Railway Budget has come and gone from the “acche din” government. However, there has been no mention of Commuter Railway for Bengaluru. The biggest beneficiary of these services are people of the city. The blame for this, however,  is not with the center, but with the State government. there was much the State could have done to facilitate Commuter Railway, which was not done. Here is the list of such issues: Lack of political will: The government of the day has the wherewithal to announce multi-crore elevated highways and induce more motor vehicle demand in the name of congestion…

Respected Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, I was delighted to read yesterday’s newspaper report in The Times of India (Only 97 city high-rises have occupancy certificates) that said that your government would “take suitable action against builders who flout the building bye-laws”. As you have rightly said, those who have violated the laws need to be punished, but while this is being done, steps need to be taken to prevent this violation from happening in the first place. It is distressing to note that "only 97 high-rise buildings in the city have obtained OCs between 2009 and 2014". This means that there are…

A 16-year-old tribal girl, an aging illiterate social worker in Rajasthan, a 23-year-old physiotherapist  in Delhi, a young journalist in Mumbai, a 50-year-old tourist from Europe, a six-year-old school girl in Bengaluru–what do these females, from different parts of the country, with diverse backgrounds, have in common ? They were all  victims of gruesome rapes that made “news”. One of the first lead stories that I wrote, over three decades ago (1979), was about the infamous Mathura rape case, in which the court released the accused policemen (who had raped Mathura at the police station) on grounds that the 16-year-old…

There are several issues - short term, medium term and long term, that I see with the RedBull FlugTag event held at Sankey Tank premises in Malleshwaram, Bangalore. 1. Short term From the photographs I have seen of the aftermath, the areas around Sankey Tank appear littered with rubbish, with trash all around the lake and in the lake as well, including non-biodegradables like thermocol. The impact on the fish, birds and other lake wildlife that ingest this thermocol can only be imagined. During events like this, the noise and bright lights also add to the disturbance to urban wildlife.…