Civic

Located in Kammanahalli in east Bengaluru, Jal Vayu Vihar or JVV is a residential colony of 540 houses spread over 22 acres. Built in 1990 by the Air Force Naval Housing Board, the apartments were meant for officers of the Indian Air Force and Navy, after they retire from service. The East gate entrance of Jal Vayu Vihar. Pic: Captain M V Prabhakar Whilst in service the men in the Indian Air Force and Navy lived in government accommodation and paid less attention to life after retirement. This was a very serious shortcoming and in the late seventies the Air…

The first BJP-led BBMP council is expected to present their maiden budget within the next fortnight. In this light, about 20 days ago, a group of like-minded citizens from across Bengaluru presented a memorandum to Mayor S K Nataraj, listing their proposals to include in the budget. This was in the presence of BBMP Commissioner H Siddaiah and Chairman of BBMP's Finance Committee, P N Sadashiva. The memorandum states that any BBMP budget should have a force or a thrust and that this year's focus could be on making Bangalore 'garbage-free'. The following are some of the proposals in the…

It was an action-packed and noisy morning as the children were told it should be! Inspirations 2010 - a civic fest and exhibition marking the launch of the eleventh year of CMCA (Children's Movement for Civic Awareness) as well as the launch of the programme for the academic year 2010-11 was held at the St Joseph's Indian High School grounds on Vittal Mallya Road on Friday, August 6th. Cricketer Robin Uthappa, ambassador of CMCA, at Inspirations 2010. Pic courtesy: CMCA The CMCA was started in 2000 as a joint initiative of the Public Affairs Centre and Swabhimana (both Bangalore-based organisations)…

When you live in an apartment block with over 1000 flats, managing maintenance costs, corresponding with neighbours and making decisions for the entire complex, may prove strenuous, especially if you are on the management committee (MC). This was what drove S Parthasarathy to start Onesolution, an apartment management software tool. Parthasarathy founded OneSolution to ease the process of managing apartment complexes. Pic courtesy: OneSolution. S Parthasarathy, a resident of Brigade Gardenia in JP Nagar 7th phase, discovered the difficulty first-hand in his voluntary stint as the founder-treasurer of his complex. "Six months down the line there were several issues. The…

In the last few years, Bangalore has seen the emergence of apartment management software tools. Sangeeta Banerjee of Apartment Adda attributes it to multiple reasons. "Bangalore has a higher Internet penetration and is a highly cosmopolitan city. It also has a higher population of younger people in apartment association committees. The average age in most associations we have interacted with is between 35-40." Most software developers think that people would prefer a software that provides value in terms of saving time, effort and providing transparency. Parthasarathy of OneSolution thinks softwares such as these work better in larger complexes and Bangalore…

I went for a short walk just now...and here are the things I did....I went across to the "Samatha" cobbler's booth across the road, and found that after 6 days, the cobbler was still absent, and the booth closed. After the closure of the booth where my "regular" lady cobbler used to repair my footwear and handbags...this man was my "regular" guy. Strangely, no other vendor in the area knows where he has gone, or what has happened to him...he's a hard-working guy (though sometimes the smell of liquor wafts across!) and does good work, so I  hope he's just…

The BBMP is building a multi-storey building to house various government departments and an e-library, under one roof, at 39th cross, 11 main, Jayanagar V block. Bhumi Puja. Pic: Chetan Boray. B N Vijaya Kumar, Jayanagar MLA performed Guddali Pooja on July 29th at the site. He says, "the first preference is for a e-Library (to be housed up in the building), where students can come and prepare for their competitive and other exams". The list of government offices which will be housed there is not yet decided, he adds. B Somashekar, Corporator of Shakambari ward-179 also attended the function.…

Every child's first teachers are their parents. And if they work as teachers in real life, that can be an advantage. Jeevitha Lakshmi (15), is a daughter of such parents. Her parents  Vijaya Kumar, 48 and Uma Devi, 42  are both teachers. Kumar is working in R S High School near Madiwala and Uma is working in Eshwari school, Wilson Garden, both private high schools. The family stays in Madivala. Jeevitha has scored high marks in her SSLC Exam. After revaluation she scored 98% in Science, Social Science and English.  When results were first announced, Jeevitha found she had scored…

I posted once about the Monkey Puzzle Tree with its beautiful leaves (go see the huge trees near the Glass House  in Lalbagh, if you can!)and later, I got theMonkey Puzzle Butterfly amongst other things, on a nature trail:A few days ago, it was very nice to see that someone still cares about our Bangalore heritage, and has re-created the Monkey Puzzle architectural detail for their home:Possibly this feature was so called because monkeys used to sit on it...it's also called "Monkey Top".

“Where were you all, madam, at that time?” asked a BBMP official dealing with the city’s infrastructure development, last week. This was not  some rhetorical cross-examination of an accused during a crime investigation (though, as you will presently see, there is an element of crime involved) but something more basic that many of us can be asked or should ask ourselves more often.Residents of a Scientists’ Colony is south Bengaluru  suddenly woke up one recent morning to find that some of their houses, inside the colony had been marked for “road widening”. The road running through the colony was perfectly…