Governance

Even as the COVID-19 contagion hits new peaks, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani is pushing his slogan of “Harega corona, jeetega Gujarat” (Corona will lose, Gujarat will win) to convey an 'all is well' picture and underline the fact that COVID-19 will not halt the state’s development. But what did come as a surprise was the recent announcement of the expansion of the civic limits of the municipal corporations of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Surat, Gandhinagar and Bhavnagar. The reason for this soon became obvious--- elections are due in these six municipal corporations, all controlled by the ruling BJP in November-December. Poll…

In a first of its kind for Bengaluru, the BBMP on August 15 launched a holistic Rabies Prevention and Control Programme, targeted at 'Independence from Rabies'. After Goa, Bengaluru is now the second to have a Rabies Helpline in the country. The helpline +91 6364893322 was inaugurated by Mayor Goutham Kumar and BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad. The pick-up vans were flagged off by BBMP’s Special Commissioner (Animal Husbandry and Solid Waste Management) Randeep Dev. The helpline is expected to reduce the burden on Animal Birth Control (ABC) centres that have been attending to dog bite complaints, and have been counselling…

BBMP launched BLCARES on August 14, to decentralise Bengaluru’s Covid management process. BLCARES or 'Bengaluru Local - Covid-19 Awareness Response and Emergency Sahaya' attempts to emulate the booth-level management technique during elections.  The programme includes BLCARES.in, a tech platform developed by the joint effort of civil society organisations including Janaagraha, Sensing Local and Reap Benefit. These groups along with Citizens for Bengaluru, CIVIC, Hasiru Dala, Naavu Bharateeyaru, Slum Mahila Sanghatane, Azim Premji Foundation, etc., will also help in citizen volunteer mobilisation and training. The BLCARES platform also contains resources and IEC training material for volunteers.  https://twitter.com/BBMPCOMM/status/1294217712781033472?s=20 Centralised COVID response had…

Delhi has no COVID war room. But the capital had become the centre of attention in the fight against COVID-19 when on June 9th, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia estimated that Delhi, groaning under an acute shortage of hospital beds, would need over 5.5 lakh beds by end July. A shocked public, the city administration, hospitals and even Union Home Minister Amit Shah stepped in. The BJP at the Centre and AAP in Delhi called a truce as they joined hands to deal with what was becoming a crisis in the capital. Their crisis management efforts finally yielded some positive results. At 10.25…

On March 18th, Chennai reported its first COVID case, that of a 20-year-old man who reached the city from New Delhi in a train. Fast forward by a little over four months, and the city has seen a total of 1,07,109 cases, with 11,720 active cases at present (figures as on August 7th). Due to two major clusters -- the returnees of Tablighi Jamaat congregation and Koyambedu market -- the city recorded thousands of cases in April and May. The good news, however, is that from reporting 3,000 odd cases every day, the city now records about 1,200 odd cases…

Sultana Shaikh Akbar, 42, was the first to be informed when an elderly woman in her neighbourhood of Agarwal Wadi in Wadala, developed a fever. Sultana coordinated with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to get the patient admitted to a hospital. But soon after, another woman started complaining of breathlessness.   Sultana has had no time to waste the past couple of months. She has juggled caring for and hospitalising patients suspected of having the virus. In addition, she manages door-to-door ration distribution in her neighbourhood. “A lot had to be done,” she says, “some of us had ration cards and…

Kempegowda tower, now located in a park near Raman Research Institute. Pic courtesy: Raman Research Institute Karnataka government recently announced a Rs 111-crore project dedicated to Bengaluru's founding father Kempe Gowda. The project included Rs 70 crores for a statue of the 16th-century chieftain at the Kempegowda International Airport, and Rs 41 crores for the ‘beautification’ of his tomb that was recently discovered in Magadi.  The project understandably came under fire given that we are among the states hit worst by COVID-19.  But the argument presented by the powers-to-be in the public domain was that the project was meant to…

“Read up. You really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.” These are famous lines from Arthur Conan Doyle’s 'A Study in Scarlet'. A problem or its solution have all transpired before. But have we missed the lessons? It has been nine months since the first case of COVID-19 was reported from Wuhan, China in November 2019. The problem took a life of its own and knocked on India’s shores through Kerala in January 2020. It became Bengaluru's problem in March of 2020. While Bengaluru started out well in keeping the pandemic under…

In India, a road accident happens every minute. Yes, you read that right, every single minute. Road accidents and India aren’t strangers. In fact, they are better acquainted than they should be. Sometime mid-July in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand six people were killed in two separate road accidents. Around the same time seven people died in five separate accidents in Gujarat. In Nashik, Maharashtra, five people were killed in two separate accidents in June. These are just a few instances from recent weeks of the thousands of road accidents that occur in India every year. Of course, since lockdown was enforced across…

Having spent the first two months of the pandemic and nationwide lockdown in politicking, to first grab and then stay in power, the Shivraj Singh Chauhan-led BJP government has now launched a 15-day state-wide “Kill Corona” programme from July 1st. The programme includes door to door surveys in urban slums and low-income households having high population density and poor municipal management as a majority of positive cases in both cities have been reported from these areas. As per data from the government's smart city portal, Indore has the second highest slum population (30%) in the state, followed by Jabalpur (46%)…