Z-Blogs

The photo speaks for itself.   ⊕

When one is sitting halfway around the world, what's happening in one's city sometimes takes on a distant, unreal quality and one tends to read emails with some amount of detachment...but the way our government is hell-bent on converting all our green spaces into buildings or roads jolts me out of the apathy.So I am posting this online petition, which each of us should sign, to prevent further depradation of Bangalore's open spaces:"Preserving Bangalore's Green cover/Open areas"http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/BTC?eI really think this is an important cause, and I'd like to encourage you to add your signature, too. It's free and takes less…

The newly introduced regulations on Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) have been briefly discussed in the post below. This is in response to the query in an earlier post: Company incorporation or partnership. This post has been contributed by S.C.Sharada and Jayashri Murali, Directors, Lex Valorem India Pvt. Ltd (Sharada.sc@lexvalorem.com and jayashri_m@airtelmail.in respectively). A LLP is basically a partnership firm established under the LLP Act, 2008, consisting of Partners who contribute to the capital of the LLP and is a legal entity which is regulated by the regulatory authority who is the Registrar of Companies. The main requirements to establish a…

As if my mother's smiling approval each morning of the various little children who bagged single digit CET ranks this year, and reading aloud of their newspaper interviews (in which each of them invariably extol the virtues of boring things such as ‘perseverance and hard work') weren't enough, the household phone has been ringing off the hook. Little cousins I didn't know existed have been dialing in with a frequency and gusto that puts fans of NRI American Idol contestants to unspeakable shame. The competitive exam season post the twelfth standard/II PU exams may be the most seemingly pointless/endless, excruciating,…

Comprehensive Trauma Consortium, is a voluntary non-profit organization established in March 2000, specializes in providing round-the-clock Free Ambulance Rescue service (Pre-hospital care) to accident victims in and around Bangalore City . We have conducted 70,000 rescues so far. The objective of this course is to create the importance of Pre-Hospital Care and equip the participant with first aid and CPR skills. This certified course is for one full day along with manual. The course fee is Rs.350/ per person. For registration please call @ 9880323829 and confirm before 30th May 2009.Venue Details : Date 30 /05/ 2009 (Saturday)Time 10.00 am…

Very often, complicated social problems are left to activists and NGOs to battle governments for resolution. But our politics being where it is, these issues never get settled with the clarity and force that they merit, and in turn they come back to bite us at the local level.This week’s lead story on the Hijra problem at JP Nagar is a clear case of such a felt-and-seen local ‘irritant’. Shopkeepers are tired of shelling out money to groups of Bengaluru’s Hijras day after day. Commuters at intersections have their own encounters to report. However, the Hijras are themselves ostracised in…

Background: Negotiations are a part of life, whether it is in business or in the political arena, whether it is in selling a company or buying a stake in a business or raising venture capital for your company. In the last week of sessions of the MPWE 2009 at IIMB (Management Programme for Women Entrepreneurs) we had a negotiations role play for purchase/sale of a business. The participants were divided into 8 teams, 4 representing the buy side and 4 the sell side. We therefore had 4 sets of negotiations. The learnings of this were so good that I wanted…

Manjushree Abhinav, one of our writers has written a book, A Grasshopper's Pilgrimage. The book is being released in Bangalore by well known actor Tom Alter at the Crosswords bookstore tomorrow on 16th of May, 6.30 PM. The event is open to all. Tom Alter and first-time author, Manjushree will both read from the book, which is a story of a young woman who happens to be tugged by the spiritual call and jumps about, trying to avoid it. It is classified as spiritual fiction. One review describes the book thus: "A Grasshopper's Pilgrimage spirals in directions unpredictable as it…

As stewards of this local publication, we are often at the intersection of a variety of public voices, energies and attitudes. This fortnight, we’ll present to you three different sides to one larger emerging story.One, is the usual scenario of frustration. The unending delays and ubiquitous inefficiency in any public works projects appears to draw only a feeble response.The pushy few complain that their fellow citizens are full of apathy. The only pressure citizens appear to able to put on local authorities is repeated phone calls, and a closeddoor meeting or two. There are isolated successes, and life moves on.…

All children I have voluntarily tutored (often, first generation literates from low income families)  over the last several years yearn to become fluent in English irrespective of the languages they speak or study in. And their parents' common refrain "Yenga pasangalum ungala maari dasu busu nu English lo pesanum" (our children must also converse fluently in English like you) has compelled the children and me to make frequent attempts to use English.   But, considering that they mainly converse in their mother tongue and/or the principal language of their neighbourhood, it is a challenge for them to find an environment…