Citizen Matters is organising two election debates/meet-the-candidates interactions in your area - one for BTM Ward (176) and one for JP Nagar ward (177). Both events will happen on the weekend of March 20-21.

March 28, will be a historic day for both Bengaluru and the High Court of Karnataka.

For 3 1/2 years, the city did not have its own government and that will soon change. If the High Court had not put its foot down repeatedly, we may have seen even more postponements.

For a number of reasons this election may turn out to be a watershed in city politics.

First, in 2010, Bengaluru is a vastly grown and messed-up city compared to 2001 when the last elections were held. Problems of all kinds - water supply, transportation, encroachment of open spaces - have multiplied, even as elite citizen assertiveness has risen, both on the net and…

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The episode at Carlton Towers could have happened anywhere in the city. The fire of 23rd February claimed nine and many more were hurt. The question of plan permissions, collusion, bye-law and safety violations and more are all being discussed in the media.

One of the points being made by authorities (especially the BBMP) now, is that they cannot be blamed if builders and owners violate plan sanctions after occupancy certificates are issued.

Really? Let's take a closer look at how plenty of wrongdoing happens during the plan approval process itself, i.e. before buildings are constructed and occupied. 

Some years ago, citizens discovered a major case of building plan and fire safety code violations for an building in Jayanagar 1st block. But it took until December 2009 for this case to be completely exposed for what it is really is: several officials involved were batting for violator all the way.…

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Citizens living within city limits often castigate BBMP and other local authorities for long delayed public works and amenities. The JP Nagar underpass is a classic case of BBMP's inability to fix what has gone wrong and reach the finish line.

But it needs to go on record that India's transportation giant, Indian Railways, arguably with far greater resources and expertise at its disposal, has recently been responsible for a disastrous project in Northeast Bangalore.

In response to a gridlocked railway level crossing at the Whitefield Railway Station in Kadugodi, the Railways responded in 2006 with an overbridge contract. The Railways runs one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, with a broad guage length of over 66,000 kms. For the Railways, a 42-metre overbridge over 25000-volt electrified lines ought to have been doable.

Not exactly. Enter 2010, both ramps of bridge terminate in thin air with an empty…

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As we begin the New Year with our 25th issue, it's time to celebrate as well as reflect. The journey thus far has been enjoyable and rewarding. We have received praise from Bangaloreans, as well as those elsewhere.  With recognition by Mint Business newspaper in 2008 and BBC in 2009, we have been accepted by citizens as well as other media as a credible source of pathbreaking local journalism.

Nevertheless challenges remain. As we endeavour to inform, interest, and involve, we too encounter apathy and stonewalling.  Unhelpful government officials, unprofessional ministers and MLAs and even unethical community groups are part of a day’s work.

A few weeks back, it was my pleasure to attend the monthly meeting of Manjari Ladies Association based in JP Nagar, as their special guest. The members were gracious and hospitable. Many of them shared their stories about careless neighbours dumping garbage and callous officials not heeding complaints.…

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"Who are these people, these former IAS officers and all, to compare London to Bangalore and propose these changes?"  he thundered on the phone. His tone and outburst were astounding, and for a moment it appeared that he had mistaken the Citizen Matters editor for someone else. "What is the paristhithi in Bangalore?" he then shot off, implying that Bengaluru was simply not London.

The speaker was Jayanagar MLA B N Vijaykumar. Citizen Matters had asked him what he thought of ABIDE's proposal to have direct elections from neighbourhoods into ward committees, which was being vetted by his party colleagues in the state cabinet for passage as law. Clearly, Vijaykumar was a making a not-so-veiled reference to former state chief secretary Dr A Ravindra, member of ABIDE who has been pushing for decentralisation reforms for Bangalore along with his colleagues.

For those less familiar, ABIDE is the chief minister's own committee created…

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Finally, elections to the Bengaluru council are to be announced soon. Roughly half the city's 198 wards have been reserved (for BC, SC, ST and women). The state election commission is expected to announce the dates by next week.

Soon, and with a 'municipal' intensity, the usual election campaigning will begin  -- party ticket quarrels, rebels turning independents, the race to nominations, disclosure affidavits and the blaring of loudspeakers in our streets as campaigning culminates.

For local elections, turnout has historically been around 50 per cent, and it's usually the urban poor who have gone out to vote. The middle and upper income groups have largely kept away. Mainstream political parties -- Congress, BJP and JD(S) in Karnataka - have mastered the art of cobbling together victories with the usual methods of courting slum-dwellers.

So what could be different this time? One key fact: the margin of many victories in the last council…

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Transport. Transport offers mobility. From mobility comes access. Access to work, socials, leisure, everything. Transport systems even shape our cities.

For years now, transport in Bengaluru has been in a state of breakdown. Our roads are flooded disproportionately with cars and two-wheelers which compete for every inch of space with the buses that carry the majority.

We've all become weary travellers. It is now not uncommon to put off a jaunt to meet someone or attend a function unless its critical or something we cannot wriggle out of. Social connections are being rewired to lessen impact.

Adding to this is the latest pressing problem of humanity, climate change. Transport systems account for between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of world energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, says the London-based World Energy Council. Greenhouse gas emissions from transport are increasing at a faster rate than any other energy-using sector, says the Nobel…

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We live in times of massive traffic pileups on our roads and the stress that comes from simply watching long lines of vehicles stopped at intersections. With the ever increasing pressure on local authorities to relieve congestion, how did it come to pass that the BBMP-proposed link road connecting the Yeshwanthpur-Yelahanka artery to NH 7 (Bellary Road) resulted in a major litigation in the High Court?

Over 4 kms of the proposed link road is to be laid through forestland inside the University of Agricultural Sciences’ GKVK campus in northern Bengaluru. The forestland itself was granted to the university by an Act of the state legislature in the 60s, attached with preconditions of preservation.

At stake are over 3500 trees, some of which are wild varieties of specially bred fruit trees part of the university’s research, called the germplasm bank. Not surprisingly, the University’s Board of Regents did not initially permit…

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There is a funny thing about ill-conceived policy. The longer it is accepted by the people, the harder it becomes to reverse course later. The destination signboards on Bengaluru’s ‘sada’ buses, run by the public-sector BMTC have been Kannada-only for along time. English is not used.

Citizen Matters asked the state government’s transport minister R Ashoka about this and he said that only Kannada people use these buses and when reminded that this was a multicultural city, he said, “What do I do?”. But bus drivers, conductors and commuters themselves are not opposed to bilingual signboards -- don’t miss our special report.

Surely our transport minister knows better. Is Bengaluru so different in the cultural and social composition of its commuters compared to Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and host of other cities? No. So why would R Ashoka, the savvy politician, prefer to take a line like this?

Before we go further, it is…

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B S Yeddyurappa is a chief minister who struck out and created history of sorts recently, something few state chief ministers have managed to do. Working with his counterpart in Tamilnadu, he oversaw the long-pending unveiling of the Tamil poet-saint’s Thiruvalluvar statue in Bengaluru.

This is not as easy as it may seem. Getting past strained ethnic tensions is fraught with risks anywhere in the world. In 1991 when the statue was originally due for unveiling, protests built up and tensions coincided with riots triggered by the Cauvery dispute. Kannada-Tamil tensions in Bengaluru have always simmered below the otherwise normal-seeming buzz of daily city life. Stoking it has been easy for everyone from unruly mobs to sanghas to political parties.

Even this time, there was steep opposition from some quarters and the threat of violence was real. Yeddyurappa showed statesman-like qualities when he took political parties into confidence early-on to pave the…

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Citizens in JP Nagar and BTM Layout have been rankled recently when red colour signs showed up on compound walls and entrances of homes and shops. The signs indicated that 7-8 metres of their property is going to acquired for yet another roadwidening project.

Last month, the BBMP decided it was going to widen the 14.5 kms-stretch from Silkboard (Hosur Road) through BTM Layout and JP Nagar to Mysore Road.

Do not miss our exclusive story for more on this and what citizens and shopkeepers are doing to protect their interests. What will happen over the next few months is unclear, but the BBMP says it is simply following Bengaluru's Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP 2005-15) which designated this road for expansion.

Is it all that simple? Turn back to some recent history. The current CDP was drafted in 2005, and before the state government put its approval in June 2007, it went…

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Two weeks ago, on a Saturday afternoon as another hectic week at Citizen Matters had wound down, we received a phone call from one Mr G (name held back) asking us whether we could distribute the Citizen Matters print magazine in the Vijaynagar area of the city. He spoke in fluent Kannada and English, and from his voice it seemed he was in his late forties. At first it was not clear why we must take him seriously, since the only thing he would give away about himself was a first name, and that he was an ‘IT consultant’.

Let’s cut to the chase: Mr G, it turned out, was not a regular ‘IT consultant’. He was representing a political party and candidate for the assembly bye-election in Vijayanagar constituency. He was urging us to launch an edition of Citizen Matters with his candidate on the cover page in that…

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The thing about blame is that it usually comes full circle. As incidents of viral fever (Dengue, Chikugunya, etc.), in the city started increasing, we decided to investigate why there was such a widespread spurt this time, how it was being tracked, who was tracking it, what they were doing about it, if it could have been averted and how. We discovered a number of worrisome realities, and do not miss our report on pages 6 and 7. Here’s our view. First, the blame game. Doctors quietly charge the BBMP for failing in mosquito eradication this year in water logged areas.

The BBMP in the meantime, led by their Chief Health Officer, is quick to blame the public. Citizens create an uncontrollable menace of garbage, they charge-particularly coconut shells and wasted tyres, in which water accumulates and mosquitoes breed. Other reasons are tossed at journalists - migrant labourers importing the…

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Around 18 years ago, a piece of paper carried the following sprited words, as a reasoned explanation for a series of amendments to a hallowed document. Here's how the words read:

"In  many  States  local  bodies have become weak  and  ineffective  on account of a variety of reasons, including the failure to hold regular elections, prolonged supersessions and inadequate devolution of powers and  functions.   As  a  result, Urban Local Bodies are  not  able  to perform effectively as vibrant democratic units of self-government."

Recognise Bengaluru in the situation there?

The hallowed document is our Constitution and the words in the quote above are the first para of the Statement of Objects and Reasons to the 74th Amendment, 1992. This is the amendment that famously wrote in obligation of the States to devolve local powers to muncipalities. A key part of the amendment was that states would…

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Dear Nandan,

The central government recently appointed you, a Bangalorean, as the head of the ambitious Universal Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), and you accepted. Congratulations. Please address one key question to set the right expectations amongst citizens early on.

In your book, Imagining India, you have rightly recognised that we are a country full of random, disconnected procedures for IDs and ‘ID proofing’. Everything from passports, to phone lines to ration cards to driver licenses, voter rolls, water connections, BPL cards, gas connections, bank accounts and more involves citizens interacting with a local, state or central government agency, PSU or private utilities. A change of address can be a nightmare. And as many, including yourself have noted, our government departments work in isolation, each having its own database with no linkage to other government databases.

The databases are usually not in good shape - problems of data entry, duplicate entries, dead entries,…

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Very often, complicated social problems are left to activists and NGOs to battle governments for resolution. But our politics being where it is, these issues never get settled with the clarity and force that they merit, and in turn they come back to bite us at the local level.

This week’s lead story on the Hijra problem at JP Nagar is a clear case of such a felt-and-seen local ‘irritant’. Shopkeepers are tired of shelling out money to groups of Bengaluru’s Hijras day after day. Commuters at intersections have their own encounters to report. However, the Hijras are themselves ostracised in our society (read: no jobs), and what’s worse, have met with police brutality.

Read Vaishnavi Vittal’s story on page 6 to learn about the many sides to this reality.
Moving on, we recently reported on a new ABIDe-proposed legislation to bring governance reform to Bengaluru, one that promises more transparency and…

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Manjushree Abhinav, one of our writers has written a book, A Grasshopper's Pilgrimage. The book is being released in Bangalore by well known actor Tom Alter at the Crosswords bookstore tomorrow on 16th of May, 6.30 PM. The event is open to all.

Tom Alter and first-time author, Manjushree will both read from the book, which is a story of a young woman who happens to be tugged by the spiritual call and jumps about, trying to avoid it. It is classified as spiritual fiction. One review describes the book thus: "A Grasshopper's Pilgrimage spirals in directions unpredictable as it follows its free-spirited and soul-searching protagonist. This tale is host to a delightful motley bunch of characters: sufi babas, smoking hippies, freedom fighters and, foreigners without visas. It is a love story of a woman's inner journey as she circles the feet of her Beloved mountain." Manjushree says it is…

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As stewards of this local publication, we are often at the intersection of a variety of public voices, energies and attitudes. This fortnight, we’ll present to you three different sides to one larger emerging story.

One, is the usual scenario of frustration. The unending delays and ubiquitous inefficiency in any public works projects appears to draw only a feeble response.

The pushy few complain that their fellow citizens are full of apathy. The only pressure citizens appear to able to put on local authorities is repeated phone calls, and a closeddoor meeting or two. There are isolated successes, and life moves on. Ultimately, the lack of accountability of our officials shows up most visibly in these projects, and this is the deeper malaise everyone understands.

In direct contrast to this is the work of the chief minister’s elite brigade, the ABIDe task force. Striking at at least one part of the problem,…

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Citizen Matters, Bangalore's own interactive newsmagazine is happy to announce the first of a series of Citizen Journalism classes, on Saturday, 9th of May.

Classes are open for all Bangaloreans. Please note the details in this post and confirm your attendance by Wednesday May 6th evening 4pm. SMS confirmations are welcome.

Date: 9th May, 2009
Location: Adarsh Business School, South End Road, Next to Police (Additional Commissioner's) Office, South End Circle, Jayanagar. (Map)
Parking: In the basement
Time: 2.30pm - 5.30pm.
Contact for the class: Raghavendra, Citizen Matters, 9611106477.

Seats will fill out quickly so please do not wait till the last minute and confirm your participation early! 

Presenters:
Kanchan Kaur, Vice-Dean, Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media
Ralph Frammolino, IIJNM visiting professor/print.

Presenters
Kanchan Kaur is Vice Dean at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media, Bangalore. Kanchan is a life-long Bangalorean who brings with her an…

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Citizen Matters Magazine - Vol 1 Issue 7

Dear Readers,

Covering the elections anywhere in the world gives journalists a good, close look at the candidates and their campaigns. Here are some slices of our analysis from the Bengaluru contests.

First, the debates. Unfortunately, most candidates did not make use of the opportunity to respond as lawmakers, let alone lawmakers with vision. Many serious questions did not invite thoughtful, reasoned answers from the candidates of the major parties.

For one question on communal violence, Krishna Byregowda, INC candidate for Bangalore South, mouthed away a textbook response: “Hatred is the source of all ills...”  K Uma of SUCI (Bangalore Central) kept on talking about starting a citizens’ movement for all the problems in the city. Some candidates - we noted this of Vijaya Bhaskar, Independent, and Vijay Raja Singh, BSP -- simply restated the problems of society. There was plenty of rhetoric…

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