RPB

According to the web site of the Greater Chennai Corporation, it is “headed by Mayor, who presides over 200 councillors, each of whom represents one of the 200 wards of the city.” The point is, where are they? The term of the last Council and, concurrently, that of the Mayor, expired in October 2016. Ever since, we have been administered by the Commissioner, in his capacity as a Special Officer. It is, therefore, more than a year since we have had elected representatives to handle civic issues. Not many in the city appear to be bothered, but in the long…

Walking along the beach for nearly 8 km and looking for nests of turtles, dead in the middle of the night, can be both fascinating and tiring. Watching an olive ridley turtle coming to shore to nest, a process that is older than dinosaurs, can be exhilarating. If not, the waves, the sand and the conversations around the environment we live in amongst people from different backgrounds can be rewarding. The fluorescent glow of the increasingly rare Noctilucas, a bioluminescent organism, adds to the beauty of the ‘turtle walk’. However, turtle conservation is not as easy as it sounds. It also…

Chennai may never become a super metro or a smart city, whatever those two terms may mean or imply, but it is fast becoming one of the most built-up cities of India. The value of open space is fast being forgotten and Government and private parties alike view all such areas only as places where buildings can be put up. You name the precinct – colleges, University, the High Court, the stations, administrative headquarters – everywhere the trend is the same. More and more buildings are coming up. No thought is being given to alternative campuses in other parts of the…

Chennai Metro Rail will connect two more sections with the airport in Tirusulam-Meenambakkam by March 2018: DMS on Anna Road and Chennai Central, the city’s most important rail terminal. With that linkage, the rail system will effectively connect suburban trains operating upto Arakkonam in the West and Gummidipoondi in the northwest, from Central. It already links the city’s central bus station, CMBT, with the airport by rail. The timeline for the new connections was recently highlighted by an executive of Chennai Metro Rail Limited to a group of visitors, including this writer. Connecting the premier rail head in the city,…

The aim of amendments to the Karnataka Private Medical Establishment (KPME) Act was to ensure protection of patient rights/citizens’ interests and bring in much needed transparency and accountability in private medical establishments. We welcome the government’s move to table the KPME amendments in the assembly. The Bill includes certain key pro-patient provisions but certain others have also been watered down to placate the private hospital owners. These changes to the Bill are proof of how the private hospital lobby was able to hold the government to ransom. We take strong objection to a closed door meeting between the private hospital…

Citizen Matters had published a story 'Bengaluru on poll mode: Get registered as voter for 2018 elections'. But unfortunately, CEO-Karnataka website is a mess and the authorities are defensive. Even when you use their URL, it takes you to some other site or gives 404 error. Only Kannada version of the new rolls is published. They are CAPTCHA-protected and are image files. Even if we download them after entering CAPTCHA, we cannot search for data in the file. Extraction is difficult. I have to work on the task once I get the English version. I cannot find my section (the…

Come November, along with swollen waterways and flooded streets, another prominent image flashed repeatedly on television screens is that of mountains of mixed garbage. Chennai’s solid waste headache is by no means entirely monsoon-related. But the issue manages to capture the media’s attention around this time of the year mostly because unregulated dumping tends to disrupt waterways in many parts. Intensified waterlogging and heightened public health concerns closely follow. The city has two dumping grounds spread across 400 plus acres in Kodungaiyur and Perungudi, both of which have been in existence for over 25 years. These dump yards handle anywhere…

Somewhat surprisingly, Bengaluru’s Intelligent Transport System (ITS) for buses — the first of its kind in India — has been shortlisted with four other cities worldwide in the sustainable transportation category by the C40 Cities Bloomberg Philanthropies Awards in New York for climate-related initiatives. The city has been proverbially bogged down by traffic snarls and lack of public transport, including taxis and auto rickshaws, and there have been few visible signs of an improvement in the situation. Nagendra, chief systems manager in the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), said work on the project had started in 2015 and was officially launched in May 2016.…

Here is a drainage map of the city of Bengaluru sourced from the Central Ground Water Board website. No city sitting on a ridge line should actually get flooded but we have achieved the impossible — of course in parts. A dotted ridge line divides the city between the Vrishabhavathy-Arkavathy-Cauvery basin and the Dakshina Pinakini, from the North to the South. There is a huge difference between these two in the slope, the hydro-geology, the soil, the rainfall, the built up area etc. The drainage patterns - the rajkaluves - are interesting too. They are more dendritic in the Vrishabhavathy-Arkavathy-Cauvery basin…

The recent astronomical hike in tomato prices in the city weighed heavily on the household budgets of many Bengalureans. Here’s a look at some reactions to this price shock: “I usually go to the Yeshwanthpur city market to buy vegetables because it's much cheaper to buy from there. I was buying ½ kg of tomato when the prices shot up instead of my usual purchase of 2-3 kgs per week. The prices of vegetables fluctuate so much. On the day the rate is cheaper, I buy in bulk and preserve the vegetables at home.” - Housekeeping staff at a private company.…