Policy

The jokes on Facebook and Whatsapp have been relentless -- some even gross, indicating the blockage of various bodily functions because they have not been linked to Aadhaar! Notwithstanding those, or the more serious concerns and critiques raised by scores of individuals, the government remains steadfast in its mission of mandating UID-linked verification of citizens for every scheme or facility that they avail. While several petitions against the statutory linking of Aadhaar with various essential services and schemes is now awaiting a ruling from the highest court of the country, mobile phone inboxes of consumers continue to be flooded with…

Three months have passed since the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was applied to housing societies/apartment associations, yet protests and confusion prevail. Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) collect monthly charges from residents, to provide goods/services for their common use. Now RWAs have to register under GST and pay tax on the monthly charges they collect; this tax burden is passed on to residents. So, instead of being the end consumer, the association is seen as a service provider to the residents. Association has to pay taxes to the vendor while buying the product, and then collect taxes from residents on maintenance…

Traffic congestion, waste management, economic inequality -- issues such as these have been bogging down Indian cities. But attempting piecemeal, inefficient solutions means that problems have only worsened. The ‘Smart Cities Mission’ (SCM) launched by Narendra Modi's government in 2015 aimed at tackling urban issues. The concept was to make cities smart - to do more with less, to use existing resources efficiently and to build on them. As per the SCM, cities should provide citizens essential infrastructure, decent quality of life, sustainable environment, and also apply smart solutions. Given the lofty objective, it is interesting to observe how the…

Imagine a busy street near your home where you have to jostle for every inch of walking space, where the air laden with vehicle emissions bears down heavily on you, and you wish everyday that your round of the shops lining it could be safer and more comfortable. Now imagine, you step out one day to find only adults cycling away in neat lanes along the same street, children playing snakes-and-ladder inside life-size boards on the clean pavements, youngsters dancing to Bollywood music on a makeshift stage on one half of the road! Well, it could happen. And it has…

A few days ago, I read on an online news website, that the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) was planning to make source segregation of waste mandatory for all residents, beginning October 2, 2017. If this was true, it was music to the ears of citizens like me – segregation maniacs that have been trying to get their family members, neighbours etc to segregate household waste at source – but with very limited success. Chennai reportedly generates the highest per capita garbage among the large metros in India – 750 gms per person per day, and we send about 5000 tons…

Nitin Gadkari’s recent plans to “bulldoze” India into a switch-over to electric vehicles has met with a fair bit of scepticism across quarters, perhaps because of the peremptory nature of his announcement and the lack of a detailed roadmap for the transition. However, this does create yet another window of opportunity to assess and analyse what’s making the move towards cleaner vehicles so difficult, and what could be done to remove the obstacles. The thrust on electric vehicles, considered to be a potential solution to the problem of alarming levels of air pollution in our cities, had in fact come…

In January this year, the organising committee members of Urur Kuppam and Alcot Kuppam, had planned to host a Carnatic music concert and a Chennai Corporation Band performance on Besant Nagar beach during the Marghazhi Festival. Little did they suspect that organising these events would lead to a protracted tussle with the government for the next six months. Applying for permission The two concerts were scheduled for January 29th and February 4th at the Besant Nagar beach. The committee members approached the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) for the necessary permission. But after making several visits to the offices of the…

It was a cloudy evening in mid-August. It had started drizzling and the dark clouds indicated a heavy spell of rain. It seemed like the South West monsoon would finally show mercy on the water-starved city of Chennai. As I walked on a narrow street that leads to Whites Road in Royapettah, my path was blocked by a water tanker, and tens of women and hundreds of pots thronging it. There was utter chaos on the street packed with houses on both sides. The women were fighting, yelling at each other and trying their best to grab their chance to…

The development of “smart” cities was one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first initiatives upon taking office in 2014. Launched the next year, the stated focus of the Indian government’s Smart Cities Mission is “on sustainable and inclusive development, and the idea is to look at compact areas, create a replicable model which will act like a lighthouse to other aspiring cities.” However, as the Mission’s portal candidly acknowledges, “There is no universally accepted definition of a smart city. It means different things to different people.” Given the myriad interpretations of that term in this rapidly urbanizing, hugely diverse country, it comes…

Even as legal proceedings continue over the issue, in June the Housing and Urban Development Department of Tamil Nadu notified rules and guidelines for the regularisation of unauthorised structures under all urban local bodies in the state. The rule allows the regularisation of unauthorised buildings built before July 1 2007, upon payment of a penalty amount to the municipal authorities. While the Greater Chennai Corporation is yet to open the online application process for house owners who have violated the building byelaws, there seems to be growing dissent against the government decision. And this dissent among citizens may, in all…