OPINION

Bengaluru City Traffic Police, as reported by the media, has initiated steps to book those guilty of three major offences -- driving or riding against the flow of traffic, riding on the footpath, and wrongful parking under Section 283 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Although the news reports did not elicit much reaction from an apathetic public, the change in policy has the potential to harm citizens by inflicting devastating consequences for relatively minor infractions. What is Section 283? Section 283 deals with “doing any act, or by omitting to take order with any property in his possession or…

The explosion of Covid-19 cases in China towards the end of 2022 and early 2023 reminded us, once again, that pandemics have a way of lingering and forcing themselves to the forefront of our consciousness. As public health policy experts have been saying for years, it is not a question of “if” but “when” the next pandemic (or a new and highly virulent variant of Covid-19) arrives. Since a future pandemic seems inevitable, we argue that the questions we should be asking are will we be able to respond effectively when the pandemic arrives and does effective response depend on…

By now you may have cast your vote and got back home. Did you find it easy to make a choice? I did not. The other day, my friend Sanjay Vijayaraghavan, a long-time voter in Bengaluru, looked at the list of candidates in his constituency and groaned, "None of them look inspiring." He was not alone. There were groups discussing the pros and cons of NOTA due to the lack of appealing choices. Frustration with the quality of MLA candidates The quality and rhetoric of campaigns over the last few elections have not improved. Rather than presenting long term and…

On February 19th, the police had registered an FIR against 70 citizens, who took part in a silent march protesting the proposed Sankey road flyover. The protestors were accused of committing various crimes, including unlawful assembly, wrongful restraint, obstruction to any person in any public place. All of which are offenses punishable under the Indian Penal Code. This came to light only when notices were issued in the first weeek of April to those who had participated in the protest. Some weeks later, in Yelahanka, another Bengaluru neighbourhood, several farmers who had been protesting the inadequate compensation provided by the…

In recent years, we have seen a dramatic rise in instances of flooding, along with increasing population density and expanding concrete surfaces. All these add extra pressure to the stormwater drain networks, which also put people living near drains at risk. Therefore, the question that arises is do we need to revisit engineering designs of stormwater drains? Pipes and sewage drains, symbolic of the colonial period, displaced the traditional systems of water from wells and lakes. This is because piped water, which brings water into the city, and drains, carrying sewage out, were viewed as indicators of modernity. The problem…

In Bengaluru, people lose 3-4 hours every day in commute thanks to heavily congested roads. Despite having public transport options including BMTC and Namma Metro, the traffic congestion remains unresolved. The NITI Ayog’s 2018 report estimates that Bengaluru city incurs an avoidable loss of Rs 47,743 crore every year. What is wrong? The real reason is that good mobility relies on a vast number of measures, most of which are missing. A few of these steps were attempted, but they failed due to improper execution. This article explains what these measures are, and suggests how to implement them effectively in…

In the run-up to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) elections scheduled before the end of this calendar year, Bengaluru’s civil society organisations are getting more active to highlight civic issues that need urgent attention. As a first step, on June 24th, the Civil Society Forum (a coalition of civil society groups based in Bengaluru) submitted its “Manifesto for Development of Bengaluru in next five years” to senior representatives of political parties. The manifesto does not pull any punches. When it says, for instance; “Local self-government, with transparency, accountability and people’s participation, as envisaged in the 74th Constitutional Amendment (CAA)…

A lone tempo with jumbo bags hanging from the edges and plastic bags  of mixed waste piled high in the van are a familiar sight  in Bengaluru. Despite the fact that in the last few years, wards that started to use separate vehicles to collect different streams of waste saw much better quality of waste collection. It ensured waste that was easy to recycle did not get sent to landfills or burnt on the wayside. Recently, BBMP said they plan to discontinue sending separate vehicles to collect dry waste and will look at a single vehicle having compartmentalised spaces collecting…

The termination of 80 workers of India’s first Public Sector Undertaking (PSU), M/s Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) Limited in Bengaluru on December 21st, 2021 is the latest instance of the long history of labour abuse at ITI. Their struggle ever since for fair treatment and wages reached its 100th day on March 10th. Though the workers had put in between 3 to 35 years at the ITI, they were all still designated as “contract workers”. In recent times, as with all PSUs, ITI’s contract workers have been increasingly vulnerable to being “casualised”---that is transformed from being employed chiefly on permanent…

How has Bengaluru city's sweeping transformation over the last 30 years impacted its street-based sex workers? Bengaluru, which has no specific red light area, has hosted a vast landscape for street-based sex work – a category of informal labour that is not strictly illegal, but is considered undesirable and in urgent need of rescue and rehabilitation. However, in the last three decades, the meaning of ‘public space’ has undergone a dramatic change in Bengaluru, alongside the definition of who ought to legitimately constitute the ‘public’ or 'desirable worker'. Consequently, an entire ecology around street-based sex work has slowly disintegrated, pushing…