OPINION

Freedom from garbage. The words have a nice ring to them, which is probably why the BBMP chose the name, KasaMuktha, for its new effort to manage waste in the city. Forced by the High Court to ensure that all solid waste is segregated at source in homes and offices, the municipality is struggling to come up with an alternative that is acceptable to citizens, and works well. Why? Simple. All our earlier efforts to 'manage' trash were built around landfills. Simply collect the trash from the citizens of Bangalore, and take it away to villages outside the city and…

As the monsoons hit Bangalore quenching the thirst of a parched landscape, the heavenly waters also bring with it the burden of deadly diseases like dengue. As industrial revolution and rapid scientific advancement made life easy for human life on this planet, it also brought in unforeseen challenges with regard to health and hygiene. Dengue fever, from being present in small pockets around the tropical earth, has now become a pandemic putting almost one third of the world population at risk. It is a flu-like viral fever spread by mosquito bites. The severe form potentially kills 1 in 5 affected…

A friend forwarded me the link to a parenting blog recently. The blogger, mother of a seven-year-old, takes up the challenge of yelling less. She’s inspired by the blog famous among parenting blogs, Orange Rhino. For those who are not familiar, The Orange Rhino is the name of a challenge where the aforementioned blogger decided to go 365 days without yelling at her kids. All four of them. Yes. Four. And she succeeded. As for me, I prefer the Maun Vrat, the age-old spiritual practice of silence. Of course, I have my own version of it. Mine comes into application…

Ever so often, somebody makes the statement – that we need to have a right to water. You can substitute water with education, food, health or any other resource-dependent ‘right’ — the arguments are quite similar: that not enough people have sufficient access to it, that the lack of availability of the right was a fundamental human indignity, that it was likely against the fundamental right to life guaranteed by the constitution, and that it was high time the state did something about it. For better or worse, this has now resulted in Right to Education legislation, and will likely…

If there is one politician who is most qualified to present a Budget for Karnataka, it is the Chief Minister himself - Siddaramaiah. While he has shown his ability to do the fine balance with not antagonising the public with more taxes, he has played to the gallery as far as keeping multiple vote banks in good humour is concerned. What should the budget aim to do? What are the key measures that should have been dealt with differently in the budget? Creation of more jobs across agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors should be the fundamental objective for the moment.…

“His form is ungainly — his intellect small —” (So the Bellman would often remark) “But his courage is perfect! And that, after all, Is the thing that one needs with a Snark. Lewis Carroll: The Hunting of the Snark About 10 years ago, four NGOs in Bangalore — Janaagraha, Public Affairs Centre, Centre for Budget and Policy Studies and Voices — got together to demand quarterly accounts from the Bangalore City Corporation. This was called the PROOF campaign, and it attracted a great deal of interest. PROOF became possible because a system of accounting for the Corporation had been…

Every budget talks about how Bangalore is an important metropolis and how its glory as an IT-BT capital has to be restored. In keeping with the current sentiment, the budget has discussions about garbage, roads, sites and investments. However there is only so much a city can take; so much a city can absorb; a limit to which it can cope. So, the question with every budget is that why are we so Bangalore-centric? Unpack the current Karnataka budget and you have a section dedicated to Bangalore which details out fly-overs, sky-walks, grade separators and garbage management. There is an…

The new Budget has been announced. For the first Budget with limited time, it is indeed a good one. Our Chief Minister  has said in the introduction that he intends to provide every citizen the bare necessities of life, a house, water in the tap, power, a road to the house, sewage facilities, education for children and safety for people and property. Ultimately this is what every citizen looks forward to and what we have not been able to achieve in the past 65 years. He has stated that he will ensure that taxpayers’ money is well-spent with no wastage,…

"Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books", said John Ruskin in Sesame and Lillies in 1865. What Ruskin told us around 150 years back is still valid. Do you agree? How many of us feel happy when a specific book has made such an impression that it is etched into our souls. A school textbook, an article from a magazine, an Enid Blyton story, a Jane Austen novel or even a grandma's lullaby or anything that has helped us in comprehending the intricacies of life…

Years ago, my grandmother apparently cured her five children’s whooping cough by using natural Ayurvedic remedies. When we were kids and she was visiting us, Nani was the ‘go-to’ person for everything from upset tummies to cuts, bruises and falls. And as far as I remember, her remedies usually worked. According to my mother, “in those days, in her generation, people knew.” Now if you ask me, these days most of us don’t know. And even if we do, it feels safer applying a medicine instead of a turmeric powder and mustard oil mix on a burn. What if the…