PRESS RELEASE

Several hundred pourakarmikas gathered at the BBMP Head Office today to demand four months salary. The BBMP, which is the principal employer of these pourakarmikas decided to pay the workers directly from January 2018, and to rid the contract-system that was prevalent earlier. The biometric system that was put in place to identify the number of workers in the city, so that the BBMP can pay them directly has been ridden with discrepancies, thus creating a situation where powrakarmikas who turn up for work every day were marked absent and had their salaries cut. The State Government and BBMP also…

Our desire is to make a difference to the politics of the state by actively engaging in the perspective building of political manifestos in the coming elections of the state and later aim at working with the state and its agencies in shaping the governance structures. We intend to have quarterly, department-wise interactions with the elected government to follow-up on the promises made by the winning party and the commitments made on our manifesto.   The recommendations that have been raised have been taken from critically viewing the development of the state over the last five years as well as…

Bangalore Political Action Committee (B.PAC) undertook this study focusing on the 27 Assembly constituencies and today released the rating of the MLAs. Bangalore city in spite of being progressive city in several segments, voter turnout in the city is the lowest in the past elections. Bengaluru has voted 47.22% and 58.27% respectively during 2008 and 2013 Assembly elections. B.PAC under it’s Election Habba initiative carried out a range of initiatives/programs. Initiatives Impact One Million New Votes (OMNV) campaign to facilitate new voter registrations 14,830 Registered Forms, 56 Campaigns across residential communities, Tech campuses and educational institutions Myconstituency,MyManifesto toengage with communities…

The American Society of Naturalists (ASN) conferred its prestigious 2018 Presidential Award to evolutionary biologists from the National Centre for Biological Sciences of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, based in Bangalore, India. The ASN Presidential Award honors an outstanding research article from among all the papers published in the society's journal, The American Naturalist, in the preceding calendar year. This is a prominent scientific journal that publishes research papers in frontier areas of evolutionary biology. This year's award was given to the NCBS team for their research paper in the April 2017 issue of The American Naturalist, probing how…

GUIDING PRINCIPLES REMOVAL OF DISCRIMINATION AND PARITY IN TARIFF People living in apartments, no matter how large an apartment complex is, are NOT bulk-consumers. We are the same as individual house owners. All tariffs applicable to apartments should be on par with individual house owners. In addition, club house, swimming pool, STP etc. in apartment complexes are not commercial activities, hence all tariffs (water, power etc.) should only be at residential rates and not at commercial rates. PROVISIONING OF SERVICES Access to basic amenities like water, sewage network, garbage collection etc. is lacking in quite a few areas. The Government…

Namma Bengaluru Foundation hosted its flagship initiative – ‘the 9th Namma Bengaluru Awards’ (NBA) in Bengaluru today. The awards, which aims to honour the ‘real heroes’ of Bengaluru, recognized 6 extraordinary Bengalureans for their unparalleled contribution towards making the city better. Since 2009, the jury members which comprises of leading Bengalureans from all walks of life, select awardees in fair and transparent manner. The winner’s names are kept confidential and is revealed only on the day of the event. In the past, IAS, IPS, IFS and officials in all levels of administration have been honoured in Government Official of the…

74th Amendment of the Constitution provides for the Local Government, that is to say, the constitution and powers of municipal corporations, improvement trusts, district boards, mining settlement authorities and other local authorities for the purpose of local self-Government or village administration. To aid local governance, Corporation Fund - Section 149 details the fiscal responsibility of the BBMP. “All money received by or on behalf of the corporation by or under this Act or any other law, ​all taxes, tolls and other imposts, fines, fees, penalties paid to or levied by it under this Act, ​all proceeds of land or other…

The growth in the nation’s cities has been maddeningly slow. And it has not even been much, according to the fifth edition of Janaagraha’s Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) 2017. There has been some improvement in the quality of governance in 23 cities. Yet, this has come about at a frustrating snail’s pace. Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (Janaagraha), a Bengaluru-based non-profit, has surveyed the quality of governance in 23 major cities in 20 states. The survey was based on 89 questions. Pune was the Number 1 grosser, scoring between 3.0 and 5.1 on 10 and topping the…

A wide range of people from all over Bangalore, representing a range of organisations and communities from within the city, peri-urban areas and villages affected by waste disposal, were present when Justice N. Kumar (Retd.), Former Judge of the High Court of Karnataka, released: “Bangalore’s Toxic Legacy Intensifies: Status of Landfills, Waste Processing Sites and Dumping grounds, and working conditions of Pourakarmikas”, a report prepared by Environment Support Group. This report provides a critical framework to evaluate the progress achieved in advancing environmental and social justice of communities impacted by waste handling and disposal, and is prepared to support ongoing…

While the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) recently published the Draft Revised Master Plan for Bengaluru, civil society groups from the city have filed Writ Petitions in the High Court of Karnataka challenging the constitutional authority of the BDA to prepare the Master Plan. They have argued that it is the constitutionally mandated Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC) that should prepare the Master Plan and not the BDA. As the High Court of Karnataka adjudicates whether the BDA or the MPC should have the power to make the Master Plan, this CLPR briefing note authored by Sudhir Krishnaswamy and Mathew Idiculla examines…