safety

Students of St Mark's Public School at the Road Safety Campaign. Pic: Ravikala Baliga Children crusade for road safety Children’s Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA) children believe that ‘Change begins with each one of us’!  The Game Changers Civic Club of St. Marks Public School is one among the many member school clubs of the CMCA who stand by this belief.  Students of this club are a bunch of enthusiastic teenagers, who yearn to bring about a positive change in themselves, and inspire and transform citizens of their community and the city. Towards this endeavour to make a difference, the…

As part of my “bite series”, I want to focus on the beginning – where it all starts. So, are dogs born biters or do they become biters? Do they learn to bite as they grow or are they born biters who learn not to bite? This question is a bit twisted. It’s like asking if a human learns to grasp another’s hand and break it or if a human is born with that knowledge. Most humans are born with opposable thumbs. They do have innate ability to grasp that they quickly learn to use in different situations. Depending on…

My post for this month is late. As expected, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I have been hit by writers block. But that’s not the only thing that was bound to happen sooner or later. I also got bit by a dog! A little introspection revealed to me that the bite was the reason for the block. I consider the season between Diwali and New Years to be one big party season. Time for merriment and in my mind, there is no merriment without food. So I wanted to write about food. But the dog bite did…

  October 13, 2012. A student of National Law School of India University (NLSIU) was abducted and raped by an eight-member gang inside the Jnanabharathi campus of Bangalore University, adjacent to NLSIU, when she was with a male friend. She bade goodbye to Bengaluru after the incident and returned to her hometown. She is not the only one - there are hundreds of cases of violence on women that go unreported for various reasons. Such mindless violence can be countered with intelligent precaution and sufficient safety measures. What if the victim had some sort of alarming or alerting system handy,…

Carry a charged cell phone always, as a dead mobile is of no use. File pic. Our country is witnessing the worst times for women. That is how we are feeling now. But the truth is women have been continually harassed, teased, attacked, ill-treated for centuries. We are coming to know of all the atrocities as women victims come forward and report the incidents to the law. As a result people have started talking about safety of women, laws protecting women and educating women to protect themselves against the evils prevailing around them. This is a definitely good progress. People…

The death of the 23-year-old Delhi girl after her gang rape and brutality shook the conscience of the nation, even as more and more stories continue to be reported.Bengaluru has had its own share of cases involving sexual violence against women and 2012 was no different, indicating that the remains far from safe. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics for 2011, Bangalore had ranked fourth among cities of the country in recorded rape cases.Early in 2012, C C Patil, Minister for Women and Child Welfare, had advised women to “dress appropriately” so that they do not face…

Seema Vijay, 29, hardly goes out of her house alone after 7pm. Seema stays in the posh JP Nagar 2nd phase, next to JP Nagar Cultural Association. But after 7, the roads here are dark and isolated, and harassment is common. Women rarely walk around alone at night here.There is a playground near the club, which has only added to women’s woes. Though a ‘public’ place, only boys and men use the ground. In the evenings especially, women stay away from this area as they are harassed and commented on by men hanging around in the ground. There have been…

There is an urgent need to provide safe places for children to play and have fun. Children go to unexpected extents to fulfil their desire to have fun, unaware of the consequences it could lead to. Children playing on busy streets in front of their homes run the risk of being run over by rash drivers. I saw this kid fly his kite, standing on top of his building’s water tank. Young boy flies kite atop water tank, dangerously. Pic: author. Watching the children taking such risks led to me take up a community project that can make a difference…

Courteous. Respectful. Almost obsequious. That's typically the treatment meted out to the well-heeled visitor at the entrance to any of the city's top-notch hotels. The exaggerated politeness is a sad illustration of the mile-high class barriers that permeate urban society. The erstwhile Taj Residency makes no bones about the policy of vehicular differentiation it practices. The Leela and Windsor Manor are more discrete: you just get booted by security. Pic: Kanishka Lahiri. A typical sequence of events is as follows. Mr Cool drives up in a chauffeur-driven BMW. Tinted windows, so dark they must surely be illegal, are rolled down…

"People like you and I can walk into restaurant when we need to use a toilet but not everyone can confidently do that," said Aiden Grew, one of the participants in pEtE maatu festival last weekend at NGMA. Aiden is from Canada but has lived in Bangalore for nearly decade. His statement was in response to Just Femme's question "Where are the public toilets in Bangalore?" Participants at the pEtE maatu festival marking their favourite spot in Bangalore. Pic: Padmalatha Ravi. As part of the festival, Just Femme had put up a map of Bangalore city and asked people questions…