CITIES
Residents are keeping Bengaluru’s lakes alive
In recent years some of Bengaluru’s silently suffering lakes, full of filth and pollution, have transformed into thriving ecosystems. While government agencies have done their bit, the champions of the city’s lakes are local citizens who keep an eye on each restored lake, ensuring its waters are pristine and its
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Kolkata shows what it’s like to be eating together
In Tangra, a predominantly Chinese locality, chowmein and fried rice are offered as bhog at the local Kali temple. In Mominpore, bakeries like K. Ali sell German bread alongside Christmas cake. Anglo-Indian households are known to make Bengali rice cakes or pithas at home. And the most famous example of all: Nahoum’s, a Jewish
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Gurugram gets road people can walk on
GURUGRAM’s impressive skyline hides its ground reality: broken roads, ramshackle pavements and pools of stagnant water. There is a stand-out spot, though. It’s a small stretch of road, 2.4 km in length, unusually well-designed with a cycle path, vendor zones, bus stops, EV charging points, street lights, benches, pathways and
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Can the Yamuna be revived?
The Yamuna is one of India’s most sacred rivers. But on its 22-km stretch through Delhi, the Yamuna gets reduced to being a polluted drain. Four decades of efforts to restore the river have mostly ended in failure. Delhi, one of India’s richest cities, does to the Yamuna what Indian
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Rethinking the smog
IT is 6.30 in the morning and you are starting your day in Gurugram. A thin fog, more like a mist, hangs low outside. You check your phone for the weather report to see if there could be rain coming. Along with the weather, you check the Air Quality Index
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Dry run in Bengaluru
RIGHT in the middle of February, when Bengaluru should have been celebrating salubrious weather and enjoying the warm glow of its technological and financial successes, the taps of a third of its population ran dry. How is it that an emblem of modern India, a city advanced and sophisticated in
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Baolis tumble out of Hyderabad’s past
FAR removed from its gleaming software parks and ambitious companies, a brooding necropolis on Hyderabad’s periphery is a reminder of a different kind of power and glory in an era long gone by. Rulers of the Qutb Shahi dynasty, who once took the Golconda Sultanate to great heights of globalized
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Can Lucknow get back its rivers and lakes?
THE city of Lucknow is planning a revival of its water heritage. If the effort succeeds at least one shrunken river with wetlands, lakes and rivulets could gradually spring back to life over time. Originally, the city depended on waterbodies for its survival. Thoughtless urbanization then tore this harmonious equation
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Delhi’s greener past: A map to make us think
Look around you in Delhi and the city seems to be teetering on the brink of hopelessness. A dying river, fragmented forest cover, dilapidated lakes and water tanks, open sewers, severe air pollution — matters appear to have gotten to the point where it has become difficult to imagine that
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Water smart city: Belagavi revives its abandoned wells
Every summer, until a few years ago, tempers would rise in the municipal corporation of Belagavi (formerly Belgaum), a city in northwest Karnataka. Armies of women fortified with kodas (water vessels) would barge into the mayor’s office, demanding water. They led morcha after morcha for water. Officials from the corporation, wherever they went, would be encircled
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Smart Urban PHCs: How Nagpur does it
t is a morning like any other at the primary health centre at Futala. A large number of patients have turned up. They occupy steel chairs in the waiting area. A flat-screen TV on the wall keeps them entertained. Nurses in uniform are on duty. A peon, lean and distinctive
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A million wells for Bengaluru
Rainbow Drive, a housing colony on Sarjapur Road, has never known a water shortage. It is a big thing in Bengaluru where tankers routinely make up the deficit in municipal supply and predictions have it that the city’s groundwater will all but vanish in a few years from now. Not
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Muddled nutrition in Delhi ends up in PIL
An estimated 50 percent of children in the National Capital Territory of Delhi are undernourished, but a State Food Commission that can address the problem has not been set up. The Food Security Act of 2013 stipulates the setting up of food commissions in the states to monitor mid-day meals
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Delhi gets ready to count dogs on its streets
Every Indian city has a growing population of stray dogs. In fact it’s hard to find a street or a galli without a stray dog loitering in it. Some dogs are friendly, but there are also those who are aggressive and roam around in packs. Municipalities don’t have the money or the
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Delhi dog count rolls on: Paharganj, a mixed bag
t is early in the morning and the usually busy locality of Paharganj in north Delhi is deserted and mostly asleep. There are only dogs up and about and it is clear from their restlessness that they are hungry. Some roam around in packs, without loyalties, like marauders. Others are
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Stray dogs have Srinagar on edge
SRINAGAR is vying to become a smart city so that it can attract tourists and investment. The administration has initiated many development projects too. But one civic issue is haunting civic agencies and residents and casting a shadow on the overall image of Srinagar — the stray dog problem. The
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More street dog rules, more dog attacks and deaths also
A four-year-old child was surrounded and killed by stray dogs in Hyderabad. An infant was bitten to death in a hospital in Rajasthan. Yet, no measures are taken to remove stray dogs roaming wild in our cities. Why has the stray dog become such a highly protected animal? Until 2001
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Residents seek end to dog bites, terror in Delhi
FACED with new regulations for taking care of street dogs, residents of Delhi colonies have come together to express their concern over such a responsibility being thrust upon them. They are seeking more viable solutions to multiple problems arising from the rising number of strays. A meeting convened on May
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Deadly strays? Or docile ‘community dogs’?
A resident of Ganga Apartments in the south Delhi colony of Vasant Kunj was on her way down the stairs of her building, when a pack of stray dogs on the loose rushed at her. She lost her balance, fractured her leg and ended up at the AIIMS Trauma Centre
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Dogs, people, courts: Pune housing society in a bind
Imagine the scene. It is around 2 am. A van with 25-odd stray dogs turns up at the gates of the Brahma Suncity Housing Society in Pune. They are accompanied by a busload of policemen. At that early hour, the dogs are released in the apartment complex without any intimation
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ABC is not the last word on stray dog problems
SEVERAL laws at state and Central level protect citizens from being subjected to stray dog attacks and ensure public health and safety. Yet, the common misconception is that only the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules are the ‘law’ and must be strictly adhered to. In reality, there is a host
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When dogs rule the streets and endanger people
A little girl, all of three years old, playing with other children in a park in Moti Nagar in west Delhi, is mauled and killed by a marauding pack of street dogs. Her father, a gardener, is working nearby in the same park, but can’t save her. In DLF Phase-2,
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Litterbugs in Bengaluru are held to account
How do you deal with litterbugs who throw bags of mixed garbage on the street, disfiguring the cityscape? It was the single biggest challenge civic agencies trying to clean up Bengaluru faced. Officials at Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Limited (BSWML), however, ideated a solution. In every locality there were litterbugs
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Roadmap for clean air
For more than a decade, Delhi has experimented with various pollution control measures — the ‘odd-even scheme’, smog towers, water cannon, tree plantation, the Graded Response Action Plan or GRAP, (which restricts industry, construction, and vehicular activity during winter), and now cloud seeding. Despite these efforts, the city continues to
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Bengaluru has got more water this summer, distribution is the big worry
Bengaluru has a lot going for it, from tech companies and global investors to a salubrious climate and a cheerful cosmopolitan character. But when it comes to water in taps, nobody is quite sure what to think. Last year crisis struck with some 4.5 million residents finding almost overnight they
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Colour and the ageing Kolkata taxi
Ameasure of the liveability of a city is the quality of its taxi services. If they are clean, safe and dependable it says a lot for the urban experience. But Indian cities don’t rank among the best in the world and it shows in their taxis. Kolkata’s yellow Ambassador taxis
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Odisha shows how to turn slums into homes with rights
The Odisha government’s Jaga Mission for Slum Transformation is easily a standout project in India’s slum redevelopment landscape. It ticks all the right boxes and would meet the approval of pernickety social activists. It has people’s participation, land rights, delivery of services, infrastructure, gender rights, technology, NGOs and more. The
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