Governance

More than four days after his younger brother died in a flooded sewer in Govandi in suburban Mumbai, 27-year-old Rahul Kumar was still in a hearse, headed to Gogri in Bihar’s Khagaria district, nearly 2,000 km from the financial capital, where the brothers worked as daily wage labourers.  “He did not want to enter the manhole, usko jabardasti utaara gaya (he was forcibly lowered into the sewer),” Rahul said of his brother Ramkrishna, 25, who died along with their uncle Sudhir Das, 35, on June 24. Rahul said they were construction labourers, who had worked earlier on building underground drainage…

On December 9, 2022, Maharashtra’s chief minister Eknath Shinde inaugurated a Rs 1729 crore beautification drive for Mumbai to spruce up the city to international standards.  With a sizeable amount of funds, people assumed that city infrastructure would be improved with repairs and renovations. However, six months into the process, to their dismay, citizens have witnessed wall paintings, animal installations below flyovers, well-maintained road medians being redone, garish, multi-coloured lights over street lights, paver blocks on footpaths being replaced with cement blocks apart from trees being decorated with electric lights and painted with oil paints.  Cosmetic changes as beautification project…

The Gruha Jyothi or free electricity scheme appears to be extremely popular across the state. Over 1 crore people have registered for it , nearly 42 lakh from Bengaluru. But the process of registering is turning out to be challenging for many people. Under the Gruha Jyothi scheme, households that consume less than 200 units of electricity will not have to pay the monthly bills. But to access these benefits, consumers must register on the Seva Sindhu Portal with their RR numbers and Aadhaar. The Ministry of Energy recently announced that there is no time limit for consumers to register…

On June 17th, DK Shivakumar, as the Deputy Chief Minister and the Bengaluru Development Minister held a meeting of 42 eminent personalities and experts to look into issues that need to be fixed in the city. The idea is to reform Brand Bengaluru by constituting a committee of industry leaders and officials. The state government also launched a website where the public can offer comments. City based NGO, Environment Support Group (ESG), has criticised the move for being elitist. The organisation is appealing to the government to undertake Bengaluru’s development through elected representatives in the Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC). Although…

Gangaram Hivrale has been making trips to the ward office to ask about the “promised” rehabilitation. However, he is yet to get a positive response. It’s been six years since his family was evicted. In 2017, the Bombay High Court had ordered removal of houses for the security of Tansa Pipeline and also ordered rehabilitation based on the 2000 cutoff date for informal housing.  “Every time we go to the ward office to ask about our status of Annexure-2 finalization, we are told there are no houses available in the city. We have all the documents yet, we have to…

Let me start this editorial with an important caveat. It is not, in any way, an argument against welfare schemes for the poor. Well designed and implemented welfare schemes are today more necessary than ever. My argument here is against the casualness with which such schemes are announced in a public speech as part of a party’s poll campaign strategy. Without the slightest thought given to cost or consequences. As a reporter, I have many times asked candidates how they intend to fulfil their poll promises. Every candidate gave the same reply: “satta me aane do. Tab dekhengen (let us…

Since the new Karnataka government announced the free electricity scheme, Gruha Jyoti, many news reports have talked about a large hike in electricity tariff of Rs 2.89 per unit. WhatsApp groups were forwarding messages claiming that rates went up by 50%. This piqued my curiosity, so I decided to try and understand this. Let us see how accurate they were. First, it is important to understand the different parts of your electricity bill. It is a fairly complicated beast, consisting of many moving parts. What goes into your monthly electricity bill? This report from The Hindu, explains the different parts…

For Sowndharya Gopi, a trans person who grew up in the housing unit of the Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board (TNUHDB) in Royapuram, those tenements constituted the centre of her life.  "I have faced discrimination for being a trans person all my life but the people in those housing units, who were my kith and kin, were the first among the few people who accepted me for who I am," says Sowndharya. Recalling the days of her family moving from the thatched huts to the housing unit, Sowndharya says that as many as 240 families living in the nearby…

Chennai Mayor R Priya’s Makkalai Thedi Mayor scheme was launched in May this year. Under the scheme, the Mayor is to visit all 15 Zones of the city every 15 days to meet with residents and address their grievances.  The meeting that took place in Zone 6 highlighted some key issues with how the residents have been able to engage with the Mayor.  We spent over two hours waiting in various queues before the audience with the Mayor. The poor planning left us wondering if the event was indeed Makkalai Thedi Mayor or Mayorai Thedi Makkal. Read more: In a…

The growth of Chennai has been fuelled by the construction of new buildings and the expansion of the city in all directions. The mandate of the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) is to keep erring builders in line and control illegal construction. However, collusion by builders with officials of the CMDA and civic agencies results in unauthorised construction mushrooming across Chennai. Recognising the need to regulate such development and prevent illegal construction, a Monitoring Committee was appointed by an order of the Madras High Court almost two decades ago. But in all these years of its existence not even a…