OPINION

Many of us know that hundreds of trees are  felled all over the city under the guise of road widening often with no prior approval. Traders, home-owners, street vendors and slum dwellers are  dislocated without appropriate compensation apparently for various infrastructure projects without guarantee that these tasks will meet their proposed objectives and deadlines. If these citizen groups hadn’t intervened, BBMP would have implemented its road-widening scheme launched in 2005 (pic courtesy: Hasiru Usiru/ESG) Knowing that we could either accept or question the largely brazen and undemocratic approach adopted in the name of the city's development, some groups such as…

Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure and Development Task force (ABIDe) is a Karnataka Government initiative  to build a better Bengaluru. The agency’s main aim is to provide solutions to the challenges faced by the city. Given the number of agencies required to be involved in any issue of city level urban and social development, the initiative appears to be a step in the right direction. It makes sense to create a nodal agency to co-ordinate between the various principal stakeholders.Among other recommendations towards the betterment of the city the agency has just come up with a blue print for Bengaluru’s Heritage.…

"The world is a playground, and life is pushing my swing." - Natalie Kocsis The Revised Master Plan 2015 of the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) designates playgrounds as, ‘premises used for outdoor games’. Bangalore has many such grounds which are managed by the city’s municipal corporation – Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). These grounds have unrestricted access; open play areas with some play equipment and courts, where multiple groups of youngsters are involved in various sporting activities - cricket, football, basketball and some unique hybrid sports. The Akkithimmanahalli playground before the encroachments in June 2008 (pic Rohan D'Souza) These playgrounds…

We all know Capt. Gopinath as the pioneer of low cost aviation in India. It's another matter that this whole business model is no longer viable, thanks to the vagaries of petrol price fluctuation and governmental rules and regulations. The fact remains that, in a time of monopolistic aviation practices, Capt. Gopinath undertook to start Deccan Aviation, which made traveling by air affordable to the common man for the first time. So, in our minds, this sense of ‘Capt. Gopinath empathizes with the common man’ was a kind of article of faith. And the news that he is standing for…

The phrase “environment-friendly printing” could be defined as an oxymoron, just like “genuine fake” or “happily married”. If you want to protect the environment, you should not be printing – plain and simple! Everything about printing is harmful to the environment – the toner or inks, the media or printing substrates and more than both of these put together, the waste generated through printing. Print waste (Pic courtesy: Lalana Zaveri) But print communication is a necessity in today’s market-based economy. By one estimate, the size of the digital print market in Bangalore itself is between Rs.80-100 crores per year. So…

The BBMP has recently decided and communicated its method and metrics for property tax collection from Bangaloreans. The reclassification of tax zones has led to an increase of at least 33 per cent for all properties whose zonal classification has changed. And the new tax policy keeps revising once every 3 years, with a mandatory 15 per cent increase. The Citizens Action Forum of Bangalore is taking objection to the new scheme.BackgroundProperty Tax has been bothering the citizens of Bengaluru for more than a year now. And even after a year the confusion has not lessened. Probably what has changed…

‘Because the wind wants to feel your hair, and the earth wants to touch your feet.'- Kahlil GibranWe live in nature, but we don’t live naturally. We live on the earth, but we don’t touch it. Ninety per cent of the time, we hide from the sun. We use hot water to bathe, which is a fast, functional affair. Most of the time we condition the air we breathe. In winter, we keep warm and in summers, we protect ourselves from the heat. We burn most of the vitamin in food before we eat it. In fact, we protect ourselves…

As the terror attacks and their aftermath play out in Mumbai and on the TV networks, the usual questions are making the rounds in Bengaluru. Illustration: Sujay Ramiah. Citizens around the country are going through a mix of reactions. They range from shock to worry to frustration to angst to numbness and to even a desperation to look away and move on.The attacks have again pointed out how easy it is to plan, penetrate, set up, and launch such offensives in Indian cities. That worry isn't about to go away soon. Developments: Prakruthi, a citizens group becoming known for rejuvenating…

About 30 years ago, one of my colleagues was transferred to Calcutta. A year later he came to his hometown on a holiday and it was shocking to hear his experience about the notorious traffic jams of Calcutta. Sitting in the peaceful and slow city of Bangalore we could not envisage those serious traffic jams. But then, we had no clue that we would be experiencing such jams right here very soon! Pictures of a beautiful bungalow from different angle Pic: Sudha Narasimhachar.When I used to go to work on MG Road then, I used to leave home (Yelahanka Satellite…