Series: Citizens Live

To say that the year 2019 belonged to the young people of the world would be understating it. Their voices were powerful and arresting with one clear message - “fall in line or fall by the wayside”. Climate change was one of the issues the youth engaged with, globally. Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish activist whom Time magazine recently named as its youngest-ever 'Person of the Year', had called for a worldwide protest in September. Thousands of youngsters responded to her call and flooded the streets across cities. An offshoot of that movement was Fridays For Future (FFF), a group…

Many stakeholders have been involved in the introduction of bus priority lanes in Bengaluru - BMTC, BBMP, DULT, Bengaluru City Police, among others. The project also put the advantages of public transport at the centre of public discourse once again. However, an important aspect that plays on our mind about public transport is our personal safety. Women especially, are always at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to safety. We sat down for a chat with Bhaskar Rao, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru city, on measures to improve safety in public transport. In his candid style, Rao spoke at…

As the eighth woman to become Bengaluru's Mayor, Gangambike Mallikarjun has had an eventful tenure since she took charge in September 2018. She prioritised ward committee meetings much to the pleasure of those who had been fighting for it for years, weathered the political turmoil at Vidhana Soudha, and even sheepishly coughed up fines (twice) for using plastic bags. With less than a week left for her to step down from office, she sat down for a chat with Citizens' Live, to talk about all she could accomplish in her tenure and couldn't accomplish. Her major achievement that made headlines,…

If you are a parent, you’d know how challenging it is to keep a young child still for more than a few minutes. From constant requests for loo breaks and a gazillion questions about everything, to (god forbid) fights if there is another child, it is not for nothing parents learn referring skills early on. A child’s development is a fluid, dynamic process. Nature, nurture and culture/arts are among the factors that help a child grow to be a well-rounded individual. The first two accommodate, and even encourage, a child’s need to explore and be restless. But how do you…

Vishwanath Srikantaiah, popularly known as the 'Rainman', has been in the news recently for his ambitious project to build one million recharge wells in Bengaluru. Given the dire situation we find ourselves in vis-à-vis water, the initiative could not have come at a better time. While Vishwanath has been the face of this project, a tiny community has been helping with the groundwork - the Bovi community who are the traditional well-diggers of Bengaluru. Our guest on Citizens Live this week is Ramakrishna Bovi, who has been working with Vishwanath to recharge Bengaluru's groundwater. So why is this important? While…

A couple of weeks ago, Vandana Katoch’s post on social media went viral. This mother-of-two from Delhi was celebrating her son’s score of 60 percent in board exams. It made news because her son's score "wasn’t a 90%”. While we applauded and celebrated her sentiment, the question is how easy it is to be supportive of your child who has a normal score. I can tell you from personal experience that it is difficult to practise what you preach. My niece cleared her PUC exams this year as one of the top-scoring students from Mangaluru. But another niece has struggled…

Bimal Desai has been a one-man army protecting much of what we see of Cubbon Park. The 14 cases he filed over the last two decades ensured that night-time traffic was banned in the park and encroachments were kept at bay. But one of his learnings while he was fighting the system over the years, was that you can't always win. So while he continued his legal battles, Desai decided to parallelly start greening the city to compensate for its lost green cover. Using the Miyawaki method, he has created eight patches of forests in his house, which is set…