Editors' Blog

In an earlier post, I wrote about the rise of the citizen entrepreneurs. Thought I’ll share why these active citizens do what they do. I am including myself in this club because I still volunteer occasionally. Many of our team members are engaged in their own local issues (but we ensure that is independent of our work at Citizen Matters!).  Satisfaction First of course, is the immediate sense of empowerment — that we get when we start doing something. Whether or not there are results to show. Sometimes there is a feeling of being better than the rest, because hey,…

It's yet another milestone in the journey of Oorvani Foundation. You may have read about our joint initiative with Radio Active Community Radio 90.8 MHz - Co Media Lab. The community media lab serves as a resource centre, newsroom and a space for dialogues and discussions for community collaborations. The past few months now, Co Media Lab has been organising workshops for public and for students. Co Media Lab is hosted at Jain University, and supported by the University. (More details here.) We are happy to share news of an exciting new project of the lab - a partnership with…

In the run up to the TCS World 10K which happened on May 15th, Citizen Matters was looking for runners who we could collaborate with to raise funds for our journalism. And now that the run is over, we couldn't have asked for a better set of people to collaborate with. With their help, we managed to raise Rs 2.21 lakh in a span of a month for the journalism on Citizen Matters. Thank you, all of you for being a part of our fundraising.    The TCS World 10K is over, as are the runners' campaigns, but Citizen Matters…

Oorvani Foundation and Datameet are happy to announce the launch of OpenCity.in - an urban public data portal. In cities across India, there is a lack of accessible and robust public data. Citizens often do not have access to quantitative information that helps them understand the state of their neighborhood and their city, as well as support their demands of the local government. Data when available is often lost within the hard disks of government or non-governmental organisations, documents hard disks or in individual silos. OpenCity.in is a repository of city-related public data from government sources, via RTI or open…

Pink advertisements are all over the media. It’s raining offers for women all over e-commerce websites. A newspaper carries the T-20 cricket schedule, where a pink section highlights the schedule for women’s T-20 cricket matches. It’s March 8th — International Women’s Day!  Happy Women's Day to all our readers! While saluting the women, it is also important to remember their contribution to society. The involvement of women in civic activism in the city of Bengaluru has made it all only better and better. Women are in all the fields that matter to Bengaluru—waste management, saving lakes, helping shape the public policy…

A reader wrote to us: "This article clearly violates the principle of Oorvani foundation (of non-partisan reporting)... this article from Mount Carmel event is clearly to support Rahul Gandhi as a politician." No. First, the article was not a staff report. It was the 'voice' of a student who reacted to media reports, basing her judgement on what she observed. It's the voice of a Bengalurean, and we believe every one of us has a right to express that, as long as it is articulated and reasoned. Read: Did the Mount Carmel students really stump Rahul Gandhi? Citizen Matters does not…

Some start their own enterprises because they want to be independent. Some have dreams of making it big. But some end up being change-makers, because they wish to see some problem solved, the kind nobody else was trying to fix! To be honest, I hadn’t planned to become an entrepreneur. Post 2000, I started noticing the growth pangs of Bangalore. The once-nice town was indeed becoming messy, garbage-ridden and traffic-laden. And I wanted to understand why. Why did the darn flyovers take years to build? Why did the garbage collection break down? Why did we have to depend on water…

Well - it’s time for some reflection on our part, while you are done with voting and busy with daily work. We trust you are the kind who will vote for a good candidate, not a traditional voter who will cling to a particular party all through your life. That’s why we put in hard work to compile a lot of data for you to decide which candidate is what. Let us confess: We are a small team. We don’t have the kind of manpower to chase each one of these candidates - still we feel we did our best.…

Alright — so we’re all getting ready to vote throughout the country. Some states have already completed polling. Bengaluru's turn is tomorrow. How do you decide? This election, in particular, is seeing massive interest from all around the country. However, at least some of this interest is generated because of the silly way in which the Congress and BJP are continuing to differentiate themselves from each other, when the reality is far murkier. See through the “vote for PM” distraction First of all, on the BJP’s ‘Modi for PM” campaign, this country does not have a presidential system of government,…

Data is often underestimated or ignored in public affairs, especially in the local governance space. Claims can go wrong, but data cannot lie. Data is what gives you the real picture of any given situation. With more and more data being put in public domain in India, there are so many things one can do with it, to get insights and plan the related issues better. Thankfully there are many data enthusiasts who are coming out with hundreds of ideas, that actually offer some tangible insights various issues. This weekend is the 2014 Bangalore Open Data Camp, hosted by Google,…