Civic

Spot fixing - a useful way to spend February 15, 2014 Saturday morning. Details below.  A few years ago, some of us from PNLIT spent a few hours in cleaning up a small garbage spot on Puttenahalli Road. The spot was bothering many, but all just walked past... no one was coming forward to do anything about it. Read more here. 'The Ugly Indian' group has been doing this kind of spot-fixing all over Bangalore for several years now. Read more here and here. They've been doing whatever they can, whenever they can, but as their resources are totally disproportional to…

Members of NBF and BRACE holding the press conference.T S Vidhyadhar, D S Rajshekar, Mahalakshmi Parthasarathy, Ravindranath Guru, Subbu Hegde, Nitin Seshadri and others are seen in the picture. Pic: Nikita Malusare Citizen Action Forum (CAF) backed by Namma Bengaluru Foundation (NBF), will question the Akrama Sakrama Bill – 2013 in court shortly. This was revealed in a press conference hosted by NBF on February 5th, 2014. N S Mukunda, President of Citizen Action Forum, who spoke in the press conference, questioned as to why the buyers should be responsible for the mistakes made by the builder. Since the bill…

The Goethe Institut, Bangalore tells you that it is "50 headphones. 1 synthetic voice. YOUR city." But, when you take the walk, you realise that they've given you this simple definition because there are sometimes no words to define such experiences. What I am about to tell you can't actually tell you much. And yet, I do want to say something, just so that some of you who haven't yet taken the walk, will want to try it. It tells us something we should know about our city and about who we are. To register, you can go to: REMOTE…

Rohini Kini of  Bums On The Saddle has created this procedural guidance in case your cycle has been stolen. You need to do some preparatory work, so get the details of your cycle now and keep them safely in case you ever need them. Spring into action immediately! Check around the area in case the thief has stashed the bike to pick it up later. File an FIR with the police (more details below). Record identifying features on the report – accessories, photographs and the frame number! Register your bike as stolen on the BOTS Stolen Bike registry. Visit shops in your…

According to Jana Mahiti report prepared by Ipaidabribe.com in 2010, the number of bribery cases was the highest in the Department of Stamps and Registration. The report even listed the top corrupt Sub-Registrar’s offices in Bengaluru. However, the future might change for the better, as there is some hope in the air. When P Manivannan, Chief Project Officer, Karnataka State Highways Improvement Project (KSHIP), known to be a reformist, was given the additional charge of Inspector General of Registration, Department of Stamps and Registration, the online crowd interested in bringing about some real change got curious. Manivannan is one of…

URBAN DEVEOPMENT DEPARTMENT SECRETARIATNOTIFICATION - INo.UDD 666 MyAPRa 2013' Bangalore, Dated: 31-12-2013The draft of the Karnataka Town and country Planning (Regulaflon of unauthorized development or constructions) Rules 2013, which the Government of Karnatata proposes to make in excercie of the powers conferred under section 76FF and read with section 74 of the Karnataka Town and Country planning Act, 1961 [Karnataka Act 11 of 1963) is hereby published as required under subsection (1) of section 74 of the said Act for the information of all persons likely to be affected thereby and notice is hereby given that the said draft will…

In an effort to study Photography, I recently learnt that if you are putting a story together about a Public Space, you would need to observe it over a long period of time, understand what happens there at different times of the day, what individuals or groups come there, for how long and so on. When you have a substantial understanding of the subject that you intend to photograph and have a story to tell, it is only then that you would be able to “represent” what you know through a series of photographs. In architecture, to design any built…

A few months ago when I started writing this blog, I wanted to call it Everyday City and had tried to put down as simple a blog description as I could. I had said it was about ‘observing how the everyday life of the city influences its urban spaces’. Today, I want to go a bit further on this. To begin with, what is meant by ‘everyday life’? In a workshop on Urban Studies that I attended last week, we were told that to think deeper about a research question, one could explore it in terms of ‘contrast’. So, if…