Governance

"I was inspired to start my political journey after looking at the political life of my father and uncle. So, I cannot say that I am completely new to politics," says Mayor Priya Rajan, who belongs to Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Her father, R Rajan, has been a functionary of DMK and her uncle, Chengai Sivam, was a DMK MLA. It has been a little more than a year since Mayor R Priya assumed office. As the youngest Dalit woman Mayor of Greater Chennai Corporation, she has overcome many hurdles to find success. We catch up with her to know…

In 2000, as many as 96 families who had been homeless and residing on footpaths in and around Chintadripet were provided with a new lease of life under the Permanent Shelter Scheme of the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO). But two decades on, the families residing in the Ritchie Street Home for Homeless Cooperative Housing Society find themselves in varying degrees of debt and uninhabitable living conditions.  What were the promises made to the families on resettlement? Where did the project fail? Debt owed by families in Ritchie Street housing The 96 resettled families were provided with one-room flats…

The appointment of P K Sekar Babu as the Minister-in-Charge of the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) in February 2023 was seen by the real estate sector as a focused attempt by the DMK to get someone with core knowledge of the city to help steer its expansion. The Chennai Metropolitan Area is now spread across 5,094 sq km, a giant sprawl encompassing four revenue districts. In his policy note for the CMDA, presented for 2023-24, Babu has serialised the plans to pump significant resources into development priorities for various locations. These include a grid of roads that will provide easier connectivity…

An old saying goes “it is better to side with the devil you know than the devil you don’t”. To me that seems the only reason for Bengaluru’s voters resisting whatever wave swept the rest of the state. Only in Bengaluru did BJP retain the 2018 number of 16 seats, even as it got washed away everywhere else. There are analyses aplenty in the media and the internet on how and why the BJP lost the state so badly. You can draw your own conclusions from them. Maybe India needs a new Long March revolution to get out of the…

Anyone who has visited a government office to obtain certificates or documents is aware of the daunting process it entails. With the aim to cut out long queues of disgruntled visitors, e-sevai centres were launched across the state in 2006 to provide IT enabled-services to the public. This came long before the formulation of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). Despite the pioneering move, government-run e-sevai centres in Chennai face myriad issues that prevent their effective functioning.  Working of public and private e-sevai centres in Chennai According to the Tamil Nadu e-governance agency, around 92 different kinds of services are provided…

Councillor Murugesan was born and brought up in Semmanchery. His political journey began in 1996. He started off as a Youth Wing Leader with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Then he climbed up the political ladder and became a Panchayat Councillor of Semmanchery in 2006 when the area was not part of GCC. This is his second stint as a councillor, representing Ward 200 of GCC. "Yes, very glad to hear that," says A Murugesan, the Ward 200 Councillor of Greater Chennai Corporation. He was on a call when I entered his office. "We won the court case and now…

As polling ended on May 10th, it became clear that Bengaluru would have one of the lowest voter turnouts in the state. Election officials estimate that the entire state had a turnout of 73.19%. In Bengaluru however, only around 55% of the registered voters showed up to the polls. Representational image. Pic: Public Resource Org on Flickr/CC BY 2.0 BBMP South recorded 52.80% voter turnout, BBMP Central recorded 55.39%, and BBMP North had 52.88% voter turnout. Bangalore Urban district, which comprises the peripheral constituencies like Yeshwanthpur, Byatarayanapura and Mahadevapura, recorded around 56.98% voter turnout. As headlines condemning the city’s apathy…

By now you may have cast your vote and got back home. Did you find it easy to make a choice? I did not. The other day, my friend Sanjay Vijayaraghavan, a long-time voter in Bengaluru, looked at the list of candidates in his constituency and groaned, "None of them look inspiring." He was not alone. There were groups discussing the pros and cons of NOTA due to the lack of appealing choices. Frustration with the quality of MLA candidates The quality and rhetoric of campaigns over the last few elections have not improved. Rather than presenting long term and…

Political pundits always insist that voting is our sacred duty, and all voters must vote. They say that if the voters turn out in large numbers, it will force the political parties to promise more in their manifesto, and also strive harder to fulfill those promises. Complete coverage on Karnataka Assembly Elections 2023: Information that you will need to make an informed choice This view is too simplistic, and does not look at the democratic process beyond the election.   Firstly, just the existence of a nice-looking manifesto does not automatically result in a vibrant democracy. There are no self-correcting forces…