Civic

  The state assembly election held in May 2013 saw people in Bengaluru coming out in large numbers to vote. There were 67.71 lakh voters on the voter roll, while population was 97 lakh in Bangalore. Everyone praised this as an achievement of election commission. However, were the voter rolls totally problem-free? P G Bhat, who is a retired naval officer and software professional, also an activist working towards quality voter rolls for some years now, traces the recent problems in Bangalore’s voter rolls. The 27 constituencies of Bangalore had more than 66.83 lakh voters in April 2012. Then as…

We spend a lot of time talking about national politics in India, with the general elections in 2014 being a subject of conversations for well over a year now. Conversations on state level politics take up the remainder of our time. In contrast, many of the problems that we face in Bengaluru on a day to day basis are municipal in nature: be it the lack of good roads and public transport, unreliable power supply, unsafe drinking water or garbage that lines our streets. Who becomes your next corporator or local council member is perhaps as important as who becomes…

People from very different walks of life gathered on a sidewalk today. The common thread linking them all was "dignity" and an inexplicable oneness. A cleaner street and gifts for people were mere by products. Over a month, led by Anjali Saini and her team, well heeled residents of communities worked side by side with BBMP garbage collectors, children, housewives, small shopkeepers and villagers. They took former black spots aka garbage heaps and open sewers and transformed them. Then they took pride in it and kept it that way. Today they came together to honour those that either made it…

A movement called Whitefield Rising has been brewing in Whitefield in the last few months. Many residents, supported by a core group of experts in the field, have got together to make the streets of Whitefeild Rising cleaner and greener. With the initial focus being the main road from Hope Farm to Kundanahalli, involved, excited and determined residents, teenagers and retired people are meeting on the streets and brainstorming. A simple format is emerging:  1) Go for a walk as a group on the street near your house 2) Identify issues 3) Begin fixing. Residents can fix a lot, it turns out! 4) Learn to work…

ROADS AND TRANSPORT - 2013 - PROBLEMS • BBMP and BDA have been slow to develop Priority Corridors (BIG 10, Outer Ring Road). As a result, vehicles don’t choose to stay on arterial roads. • Road surface quality is extremely poor, and is made worse by inadequate planning for rains. • Speed of construction is ridiculously slow. BDA /BBMP /Metro all seem in slow mode. • Over-emphasis on vehicular movement. Pedestrians and cyclists suffer as a result. • Inadequate bus fleet, plus weak last mile connectivity. At least 1500 per year needed to be added. • TTMCs in wrong locations,…

In India, as in other emerging economies, the physical development of the city is influenced by the everyday practices of its people. The Urban spaces are continually transformed by social, cultural, religious, political, economic and other practices. Currently, these practices intermingle with each other and with the streets of the city in a random manner. The formal plan of the city finds it difficult to account for these everyday practices due to their changing nature and because they have not been sufficiently documented or analysed. To understand this phenomenon, a series of workshops with architecture students comprising of both conceptual…

It is not easy to realise this - but this little fun thing called cycling can reduce congestion on city roads by as much as 15-20%. This reduction is possible without any large scale infrastructure investments. All we need is a little behaviour change all around the city. The reduction in congestion can come in these three significant ways: Increased reach of public transportation through First and Last Mile adoption Increasing usage of cycling for short distance commutes Cycling for local shopping and errand runs First and Last Mile adoption Improving adoption of cycling will have huge benefits for public…

On a sunny Sunday, members of the Bruhat Whitefield Residential Community Association stepped out on to the busy State Highway (SH) 35. Instead of watching a movie and spending time with their family, here they were, rolling their sleeves up and monitoring a road work. Road work? Yes. Anyone who travels on the SH 35, that goes from Kadugodi to Hosakote would know the status of the road. The heavy rains during the last week of September unleashed havoc on this already spoilt road. Volunteers of BWRCA monitoring the road work. Pic: Anantharaman Ramasamy SH 35 is one of the…

Residents and representatives of many apartment communities understood the technicalities and exchanged ideas at the workshop. Pic: Krishanu Mukherjee A workshop on 'Managing Public Money' was conducted for Treasurers of Apartment and Villa Complexes in Bangalore on October 5, Saturday. The Workshop conducted by ApartmentADDA - the Online Software for Society Accounting, attracted participation from over 40 Apartment & Villa Complexes, who utilised this platform to share challenges and best practices used by treasurers who manage funds to the tune of multiple crores in modern apartment complexes. The workshop keynote was an inspiring speech from R K Misra, a successful…

Neutralizers like baking soda are added to milk to make it last longer, which might turn harmful in the long run. Pic: Shree D N Do you ever bother about the quality of milk you consume every day in various forms? If not, be careful. Six out of eight major brands among the milk sold in Bengaluru have been proved to be of substandard quality. During a BBMP council meeting held on September 30, 2013, Corporator S Harish submitted an astounding report on the eight milk brands distributed in the city. However buyers of Nandini (a product of Karnataka Milk…