Environment

"Did you see how she did that?" I was lucky enough to attend numerous concerts, most often at the Bangalore Gayana Samaja, with my late guru Seethalakshmi Venkatesan. In every concert, we had attended together, she unfailingly pointed out nuances brought out by the performer of the day.  i Recently when a friend shared a video of Carnatic vocalist Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer performing at a sabha in Chennai, I was reminded of this when I saw the audience at this concert. A virtual who's who of today's Carnatic music stars were seated in the audience listening to the stalwart sing.…

A Memorable Morning at Neelankarai It was 5.25 a.m on June 19th. We were walking towards the Beach from East Coast Road. I'm part of Just Volunteer, an independent volunteering group and along with 30 volunteers from my team, I was on my way to the 7th Edition of the Chennai Coastal Cleanup organized by the Chennai Trekking Club. This was to be my 3rd Cleanup participation since 2014, when I had joined the 5th edition as an individual volunteer. The excitement was palpable the minute we reached there and we met the zonal leads. The briefing sessions were precise…

Chennai Coastal Cleanup booty: ­30 plastic spoons, nylon rope, 4 torn chappals and more! My daughter and I chose the Marina Light House location, along with a few children from her school. We are not newbies to clean­ups, having participated in various such activities in and around Kotturpuram, including the Chitranagar and Suryanagar slums. But the challenge of the beach is that things are buried deep in the sand and it's tougher to dig out the trash! In the middle of our activity we had these memorable moments... Mr Dhanraj who, as far as we could tell, lives on the…

When Civic Mindedness Triumphed Over Apathy For all those times we have walked past a mound of garbage on the street and turned our nose up to declare: "ugh! What filth! Why isn't anyone doing anything about it?", a whole bunch of us decided to stop passing the buck and get into the swing of things ourselves. It was time for Clean Up on an epic scale. It was pre-dawn, on a Sunday morning. Time usually spent in stockpiling on sleep and stubbornly resisting the family members' perky efforts to rise and shine. But this was not one of those…

Reclaim Chennai’s waterways, say ‘no’ to floods! There are close to 3600 water bodies in Chennai, Tiruvallur and Kanchipuram to store and recharge water and channelize excess water into the sea. However, the indiscriminate development of real estate on and along these water bodies and channels in the absence of any regulation has spelt disaster for the city. Rampant violations of building norms, maladministration in maintenance of our water bodies and the canals connecting them, improper planning and failure to construct new canals in the low lying areas, all contributed to the suffering of lakhs of people last December. But…

Do your bit against climate change: Keep your house cooler Just around six months ago, Chennai was gradually tottering back after the devastating floods. Water levels had just receded, electricity came back on and cars began speeding on the roads again. But even as people shifted back to normalcy in daily life, talks were abuzz about another important shift that was required -- one towards a more sustainable and environmentally conscious way of life. While urban sprawl, shrinking water bodies and unauthorized construction have been widely blamed for the disaster Chennai faced, the broader factor that was discussed was human-induced…

Join hands to clean 25 Km of Chennai beaches! Come June 19th and the Chennai Trekking Club (CTC) will be organising the 7th edition of the Chennai Coastal Cleanup (CCC7). This is one of the club’s key events where almost every CTC-ian gathers to take a pledge to move towards a garbage-free Chennai. CTC passes a strong message on environmental awareness through the initiative. It has organized six editions of Coastal Clean Ups since its inception and partnered with the Chennai Corporation in its last edition. Countdown to Event This event is now over. The ambitious target for the coming…

Are you a young professional passionate about water security and poverty reduction? Would you like to be part of an ambitious programme to make five million poor people water secure by 2022? We are looking for 12 young professionals with no more than five years of professional experience to form a Junior Global Advisory Panel. Members can be from any region in the world and from varying professional backgrounds (academia, industry, government and practitioners). Suitable areas of expertise would be water resources, WASH, wastewater, health, agriculture, poverty, garment industries, refugees, or gender. The Junior Global Advisory Panel will complement the Global Advisory Panel which consists of globally-recognised…

Garbage isn't exactly Rocket Science but given the filth around us, one would think it is! Given that the Government struggles with Execution and Enforcement of its well thought out policies and programs, we looked to see how exactly we can get a handle on this and if it was even possible. Turns out, it is definitely possible and "We" can do a lot with what is in our control. To understand exactly what is going on, click here. Or cheat and just read the below. (And follow too!) You and your family 1. Compost! Start by taking the one…

"Garbage, sewage and construction debris are eating up Bengaluru's Chunchaghatta lake situated in the Konankunte ward, adjacent to Eshwar Layout in southern JP Nagar." This is what an article on Citizen Matters said, more than five years ago. The article can be read here. (Chunchaghatta = Chunchughatta)  Now residents from the area have taken it upon themselves to clean up the lake. Do join the Friends of Lake - Chunchughatta Kere on Sunday, 12th June 2016, 7 a.m. to help clean the lake. Assemble at the flagpost, Gaurav Nagar, behind Brigade Gardenia. More details are in the poster below.