Infrastructure

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has written to the Union Ministry of Urban Development about having only Kannada and English signages in Namma Metro, based on the state’s two language policy. .@CMofKarnataka has written a letter to Union Minister @nstomar saying BMRCL would be asked to redesign Name Boards etc without Hindi Script pic.twitter.com/HSD5ujtQ8k — GoK Updates (@GOKUpdates) July 28, 2017 So after a sustained #nammametrohindibeda campaign online that lasted over a month, it looks like Hindi signages will have to go. BMRCL has asked the state government’s permission to change the boards. The Kannada Development Authority (KDA) wrested with the responsibility of…

Wrong information is being put out on the official Metropolitan Transport Corporation of Chennai MTC website, www.mtcbus.org, on the routes that it operates. The website itself is unfriendly and the design is years old. While MTC operates several ‘small bus’ routes, it has wrongly prefixed regular routes with S in the database, while not giving information on Small Bus routes. For example, the regular route 7E is prefixed as S07E from Broadway to Ambattur Estate. S26 has been listed as if it is a small bus, when in fact it is route 26, from Broadway to Iyyappanthangal. Such wrong information given…

The name board of the Chitrapur Mutt in Malleswaram is hidden behind a thicket of trees inside the compound. The gate is lined with colour coded waste bins that indicate the disposal of different kinds of waste. The Saraswat-Konkan community that takes care of this mutt, started practicing zero-waste processes in 2014. Rekha Mavinakurve, a frequent visitor of the mutt, is also an active volunteer in Malleshwaram working on solid waste management issues. She is a member of Malleshwaram Swabhimana Initiative, a community-based organisation (CBO) group that works in Malleshwaram. She spearheaded the movement to shift towards a completely independent…

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had two weeks ago published the list of autoblocks and waste management infrastructure data for each ward, on its website. Below is the index of the same data, grouped wardwise in an easy-to-see format on OpenCity.in Check your location in this Map and click on the link that has your ward's name and number, to see the data. Any problems in the data can be reported to the joint commissioner's office for your zone. This is first such effort in India, to bring about transparency in garbage management. You can check many issues with this data, Example:…

Pic: Shree D N The city government, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has put out details of solid waste management (SWM) microplan for Bengaluru’s wards. With this public data, you can understand what is working in garbage collection and clearance and what is not, in your ward, and engage with fellow citizens and officials to resolve it. How to access the information: Go to the homepage of the BBMP website: bbmp.gov.in Choose the language and go to the department section on http://bbmp.gov.in/en/web/guest/home Select the Solid Waste Management section. (ಘನತ್ಯಾಜ್ಯ section if in Kannada) Go to the download section - you…

When was the last time that you took your children to a public park, where they found other children to play with and a chance to engage in fun activities and learning experiences? When was it that your neighbourhood park was filled with the babble of children and their collective excitement and energy as they took part in events targeted at them in particular? As India urbanises, the open spaces in cities shrink, the people get busier and increasingly caught up in their frenetic lifestyles and the few parks that do exist become dull spaces, used occasionally by the early…

In the first part of the series on composting plant in HSR Layout, we shared the citizens’ view on Karnataka Compost Development Corporation (KCDC) plant in Kudlu. In the second part, I talked about what I saw in the plant. In this last part, I’ll be getting into the intricacies of what is going on. Every time the residents arose in protest over the functioning of Karnataka Compost Development Corporation (KCDC) plant in Kudlu, the KCDC and the BBMP would temporarily mollify them with assurances. BBMP would talk of introducing solutions for odour control or shifting the waste elsewhere, and…

It was a hot mid-afternoon on March 22nd, 2017 - just a few days after the residents of Somasundarapalya and surrounding areas called off their protest demanding the closure of Karnataka Compost Development Corporation (KCDC) waste processing plant - that I visited this plant in Bengaluru. Days after the protest, the work had resumed at the waste processing plant and trucks were lined up to unload waste collected from Bommanahalli and BTM Layout constituencies. It was business as usual at the KCDC plant - a four-decade-old wet waste composting unit developed on a six acres of land (total area owned…

Somasundara Palya lake was recently flooded with sewage water. Pic: WeAreHSRLayout Twitter handle. The Government of Karnataka and BBMP has been actively promoting composting as the way of managing organic waste at home. Composting also has been tried out in Bengaluru at bigger scales now and then, but not with much success. The Karnataka Composting Development Corporation (KCDC) in HSR Layout was commissioned by the government way before HSR Layout became a part of Bruhat Bengaluru. The plant processed waste through vermicomposting methods years ago. Now with the increasing quantity of waste, the plant has adopted regular composting methods along…

To start gaining some perspective on and compare waste management practices across the world, it may be useful to have a look at a couple of documents produced by international organisations. As we will see, their approach is largely informed by income levels classifications, but that should not stop us from learning across income-groups. Comparing waste management systems across the world Firstly, the UN-Habitat’s report “Solid Waste Management in the World’s Cities” issued in 2010 is a good place to start. The report aims at filling a gap in our understanding of Solid Waste Management (MSW) around the world and…