RPB

This summer, Jaipur’s temperatures are soaring upwards of 40 degree Celsius. Jaipur witnessed its hottest day (as of June 4, 2018) on April 26 when a temperature of 43.2 degree Celsius was recorded. Of late, at least some parts of the city are beginning to exhibit signs of climate change typical of large cities. With more concrete and asphalt replacing natural vegetation, “urban heat islands” are becoming a reality and Jaipur is a good example of this. Urban heat islands are pockets of densely populated areas in a city where temperatures are higher than the rest of the city, thanks to packed…

Chennai’s Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) is no more the monopoly provider of shared rides in the city, with share autorickshaws eating into its ridership on arterial routes. Moreover, it is losing revenues after it raised the fares, without any improvement to bus services or their quality – it had no air-conditioned services to offer this summer. But surprise! MTC did not make any move to find out how much it is losing to these 8-seater share auto vehicles, most of which are operated without a proper permit. Share autos are in the grey zone, since there is no way they can be…

The districts of Tiruvallur, Chennai and Kanchipuram once boasted of a landscape densely dotted with wetlands and a lifestyle that was closely linked to the survival of these water bodies. With the boundaries of the Chennai metropolitan area considerably distended and concrete slowly creeping into the city’s many tanks and ponds, there is an urgent need to retain whatever little waterscape we are left with. The NGO Care Earth Trust, along with The Nature Conservancy and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, has embarked on a project to restore one of South Chennai’s prominent waterbody—the Sembakkam lake. With a current water-spread area of around 100…

India is among the top five countries in e-waste generation. Within the country, Maharashtra generates the most e-waste. Increasing amount of e-waste pollution in India is adversely impacting the environment and health. Stricter regulations on e-waste management and protection of those working with e-waste is the need of the hour. The next time you think of buying a new cell phone or television on a whim, you might want to consider the effect it has on the environment and on human health. According to a recent study by researchers from University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, the generation…

Since its launch in November 2017, the Kuppai Thiruvizha has been in the news for all the right reasons, evincing phenomenal support from the denizens of different parts of the city, both online and on the ground. While the first thiruvizha was very successful for a flagship effort, we had to rethink the outreach strategy before the next one, to make the initiative more participatory and inclusive and amplify its reach to a wider range of actors. Core members of the alliance, including representatives from CAG, Urban Design Collective, Arappor Iyakkam, Vettiver Collective, etc., convened one fine morning and dissected the different aspects of…

This Earth Day, on April 22 2018 (and the previous day), residents from the Lokhandwala Township of the western suburb of Mumbai, Kandivali East, got together to participate in the “Colour My Township” initiative, organised by We All Connect (wAc) with the support of Kansai Nerolac Paints Limited. wAc is a community group that was formed to promote bonding and oneness among residents of the township. A few months ago, the group painted a small wall together and members found that painting compound walls together with neighbours was a good way to get to know them. According to Mr Santosh Shetty, founder of…

West Bengal’s tryst with dengue in 2017 could not have been more deadly. Around 13000 people were affected and nearly 100 people lost their lives to the disease. Among the worst hit was the South 24 Parganas district with every household having at least one person down with the mosquito-borne disease. So, the citizens cannot be blamed for going into a panic mode every time the possibility of another outbreak is suspected. This being the case, you would expect the state government to be on its toes, leaving no stones unturned to ensure another dengue outbreak is avoided. Unfortunately, that’s not the…

To provide seamless movement of vehicles at toll plazas, FASTag was launched  in the year 2014. The FASTag is a passive RFID tag affixed at the centre of the windscreen of vehicles. Vehicles can drive through the FASTag lanes at toll plazas after recharging their Tag accounts and the toll amount will be automatically deducted from the account. The rules made in 2014  also contained a provision that any non-FASTag vehicle entering the dedicated FASTag lane would have to pay two times the toll amount, i.e., 100% penalty. The progress of FASTag The government has now made it mandatory  for all vehicles manufactured or sold after…

During a question and answer session in Delhi late last year, I was asked this question “Since Diwali, the Delhi government has installed 20 continuous monitoring stations. Despite that, why are the pollution levels still so high?” The simple answer to this is that monitoring is a diagnostic tool to assess levels of air pollution and in itself does not reduce any air pollution. What it does do, is provide a starting point for understanding the air pollution problem and a direction for addressing pollution control options. This however got me thinking. Having worked on air pollution-related research over my entire…

I am a mother, daughter, wife, sister, friend, animal-lover, community advocate, and victim of having a sweet tooth. I clearly do not mention these roles in any particular order of priority since “victim of a sweet tooth” is at the end. All my roles are incredibly important to me because each one feeds a part of my being. But, reflecting on it, I realized that seven of them can be described as being a part of the broadest one in there: community advocate. Being a mother, daughter, wife, sister, friend, dog-lover, and victim of having a sweet tooth all lead…