Civic

I was walking down the Inner Ring Road, from Jayadeva Circle towards Silk Board, and was struck by the difference in the way roads are designed now. No trees, no shade, to make the pedestrians’

Last week, some "columns" made of plastic (of terracotta look, complete with fake "burnt" patches, with rectangular frames on top for advertisements, suddenly made their appearance on M G Road. All the newspapers picked up

Some years ago, all of us had to bear with the roads, and sidewalks too, getting dug up for various reasons; one of them was OFC. "OFC"! said the little concrete signposts said, that came

I was walking along the "80 ft Ring Road" (I still don’t know the name of this road, that goes from the Silk Board along Ragigudda up to Kanakapura Road!), when I saw how this

While high profile, high powered summits on urban infrastructure development are hogging media headlines, a more low-key process taking place on the ground holds out hope for the beleaguered residents of one corner of the

So we now have a new government and one that says it will keep its promises. And we have freshly-elected MLAs, including some who have gone on record "rededicating themselves to the citizens of their

At the end of a recent article headlined "A right to walk," Gurcharan Das suggested encouragingly that citizens can make a difference to city life if they really try. "The starting point is to extend

The spouse of a politician standing for election from one of several constituencies in Bangalore visited our home today to persuade us to vote for her partner. The entourage of about ten or twelve people

VIPs continue to be stumbling blocks in the paths of ordinary citizens. My daughter and I had another brush with a V/VIP at HAL Airport on Friday (28 March) morning. This time it was Rahul

  Last Thursday evening there was such an exceptionally grim gridlock at HAL Airport that landing passengers had to cool their heels or wander about between cars and puddles for over half an hour while

I thought I’d begin my blog on Citizen Matters with the question: does the citizen really matter? Recent experiences in Bangalore suggest that they do not, especially in the context of public policy. The ongoing