Infrastructure

A garbage dump in residential Electronic City. Pic: Nishit Sharma It was a bitter cold morning of January 2010 in Jammu when my phone rang. It was a landline number with STD code as ‘080.’ I answered the call only to realise moments later that I had been called back into service from a nine-month sabbatical. This time, I was posted at the ‘Garden city of India.’ I was excited to start my second stint in Bangalore as it was the preferred destination for all software engineers. I booked my tickets and landed in Bangalore a week later. As mentioned…

Beyond Carlton has launched India’s first mobile app on fire safety. The app encourages citizen participation in identifying fire safety violations and reporting the same for effective action by the Fire Department. The app aims to: • To help identify more violations that can be addressed by the authorities• To sensitize and co-­opt citizens to play a more dominant role in fire safety Fire Champ, the mobile application, launched by Beyond Carlton along with technical support from IChangeMyCity.com and involvement of Karnataka Fire and Emergency Services enables you to report any fire-­related measures not adhered to in a building around…

KCDC all set to process waste with new machines. Pic: Nikita Malusare With garbage segregation norms not being adhered to by most residents in the city, landfills are the norm. Even in cases where the segregation is properly done, there is little infrastructure that can handle the end-to-end processing of the waste. The segregated waste is sometimes getting mixed on its way to landfills. Lack of scientific processing of such waste is adding to the problem. Karnataka Compost Development Corporation (KCDC) might have been established with a good intention of converting organic waste into compost. It would have been situated…

Bus submerged in the S C Road underpass. Pic courtesy: The Hindu Whenever it rains in the city, the drains in the city choke. It is a common sight to see the railway underpass near Anand Rao Circle on Subedar Chatram Road holding loads of water, not letting any vehicle pass through. Normal life in the surrounding areas goes out of gear. Now, as per the instructions of Ramalinga Reddy, Bangalore District In charge Minister, Mayor Shantakumari and BBMP Commissioner M Lakshminarayana, BBMP officials have prepared a plan to construct a new side drain, within four months. The Palike plans…

Respected Sir, Sub: Imperatives for Smart Power for Smart Bengaluru BESCOM, as also all the other ESCOMs, have been claiming improved performances over the past few years. Even as that may be true, Sir, you'll appreciate that if Bengaluru, and the other Karnataka cities, have to be identified as "smart cities" of the future, the performances of these service providers have a very long way to go. And, it is totally doubtful if they can measure up to the task, given the constraints they are operating under, largely because of government ownership. The biggest problem they are facing today is…

Today KCDC has around 300 vermi-composting pits. Pic: Nikita Malusare I had ended my first blog on garbage (you can read this blog here) with the observation that the Karnataka Compost Development Corporation was not making a great deal of money from the business of producing compost from city garbage, even though we had a long waiting list of satisfied customers and no marketing problem on our hand. We had two problems with compost production. The first was that in a city that produced plenty of garbage - it was estimated to be around 1,000 tons per day then and…

  Pashmina Waterfront as seen on a Google map. Investing in real estate in Bangalore is a dream of any investor. However, is the growth of this sector in tune with the infrastructure that the city can handle? A close look by Citizen Matters at 26 constructions coming up in Whitefield - KR Puram area in East Bengaluru shows some alarming observations. When the 8,000 flats are fully occupied, new residents will need 10,662.87 KL of water a day (equivalent of 1780 water tankers of 6000 Litres). More than 19,697 cars will add to Whitefield traffic. Ministry of Environment and…

In 1997, while I was enjoying myself grappling with the policy challenges of the power sector, I was abruptly told that I must hand over my charge to an appointed successor – I was the Additional Secretary in the Energy Department, Karnataka – and take command of a tottering public sector undertaking, the Karnataka Agro Industries Corporation, as its Chairperson and Managing Director. I was aghast; but there was no going against the appointment. The Karnataka Agro Industries Corporation, a once proud institution that owed its prominence to the fact that it was a near monopoly provider of fertilizer retailing…

  ‘Development’! This term sends chills down my spine these days! I want to just run away from this once beautiful city of Bengaluru which is being ransacked from all sides.  As I drive past any highway, it is nauseating to see huge hoardings of various builders – 3 BHK, 4 BHK apartments/villas with all modern facilities such as gyms, parks, swimming pools, clubs, malls and what not for sale starting from Rs.1 crore!   ‘Crore’ was a figure which I saw only in a bank’s day book when I worked for a Bank!  But today all Tom, Dick and…

A water tanker collects water from a borewell next to Bellandur lake, whose water is contaminated according to tests by the Pollution Control Board. Pic: Meera K. The terms ‘water tankers’ and ‘water mafia’ are not new to an average Bangalorean. Neither is the knowledge that a vast part of the namma Bengaluru depends on the water they supply. Some of us like to believe the public authorities when they try to deny the existence of ‘mafia’ in managing water or garbage but their existence is a reality. Have you ever tried to understand how water mafias exercise a form…