Articles by Navya P K

Navya has 12 years of experience in journalism, covering development, urban governance and environment. She was earlier Senior Journalist, Citizen Matters, and Reporter, The New Indian Express. She has also freelanced for publications such as The News Minute, Factor Daily and India Together. Navya won the All India Environment Journalism Award, 2013, for her investigative series on the environmental violations of an upcoming SEZ in Bengaluru, published in Citizen Matters. She also won the PII-UNICEF fellowship in 2016 to report on child rights in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Navya has an MA in Political Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a PG Diploma from the Asian College of Journalism.

On February 1st, union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the final (Interim) budget from the current government that will seek an electoral mandate in a few weeks from now. The minister’s speech had only two major announcements on urban public transport: one, that e-buses would be encouraged, and two, that Metro Rail and NaMo Bharat trains would be further supported in large cities. This followed the same pattern of allocation for transport that the union government has made over the five years of its current term. Indian cities have been grappling to contain heavy traffic and emissions from the large…

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Part 1 of the series explained Bescom's responsibilities in terms of preventing accidents, and what citizens can do if they see a safety hazard.  Part 2 looks at what you can do if you suffer injury/property damage.  What happens in case of an accident? After any electrical accident, its cause is investigated by a separate department - the Department of Electrical Inspectorate under the Energy ministry. This department submits a report to the government, with a copy to Bescom. Additionally, Bescom has a committee, comprising a retired judge and a retired engineer, that visits the accident site, gathers information from…

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Last October, 23-year-old Soundharya and her nine-month-old daughter lost their lives to electrocution by a Bescom live wire in Hope Farm, Whitefield. In August, a Christ University student was burned by a live wire from an electric pole that fell when a vehicle accidentally pulled on an OFC illegally put up on the pole. What are Bescom's responsibilities in terms of preventing accidents? And what can you, as a citizen, do if you see a safety hazard, or if you suffer injury/property damage? Here is a guide. According to data Bescom shared with this reporter, 134 people died in Bescom-related…

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Kochu Shankar, a resident of Banjara Layout in Horamavu, has not had to buy water from private tankers this year, unlike the majority of households in the layout. The rainwater harvesting (RWH) system at his home routes rainwater from the rooftop to the borewell, recharging it and ensuring a year-round water supply for the two-member family. Most residents in the layout have been buying water from private tankers over the past few months. Horamavu, part of the 110 villages added to Bengaluru city corporation limits in 2008, is not getting Kaveri water supply yet. Besides, with extensive digging of new…

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At 51 years, N C Bhatra, a migrant labourer in Chennai, finds the 20-hour train journey to his hometown in Puri, Odisha, arduous and costly. So much so that he has limited his trips home to see his wife and two children to just one or two times a year. Bhatra had migrated from Puri to Chennai in 1996. Reserving a ticket in the sleeper coach was much easier then, he says. But over the past five years, he has never been able to book tickets directly as they get sold out much faster.  “To get a ticket nowadays, I…

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World class cities don’t happen in one year. That’s as long as Basavaraj Bommai has been chief minister of Karnataka. Like his predecessors, Bommai too has retained the lucrative portfolio of Minister for Bengaluru Development, in which context he has spoken about making Bengaluru a world class city. Bommai and his supporters, while celebrating his first anniversary as CM on July 28th, mentioned the many promises he has made in taking Bengaluru towards that goal. None of them are very different from what his predecessors had promised. Neither is the city any better off today than it was one year,…

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Krishnamurthy, an auto driver in Bengaluru for the past 22 years, finds passengers through ride-hailing apps like Ola and Uber only when heading back home at night. To find passengers going in the same direction. At other times, he is able to find customers around the malls where he usually works without using the apps. His main grouse is over the commission that the apps charge, but says customers tend to trust apps more even if their charges are high. For instance, on the app, he shows that the charge for a particular 1-km trip was Rs 90. “If a…

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Bengaluru will soon have 8600 CCTV cameras monitoring activity in public spaces. While the city currently has around 1,100 such cameras, another 7,500 would be added as part of a new 'Safe City' project. One key objective of the project, financed by the Center's Nirbhaya fund, is to monitor, detect and prevent crimes against women. What would this massive surveillance project entail - who will look at the footage, how will it be used, and what are the expected outcomes? Here's what we found, based on the tender documents for the project. The Centre had approved Safe City projects for…

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The Karnataka government has of late been mulling a solution to the problem of stray dog attacks. Prabhu Chauhan, Minister for Animal Husbandry, has said they are considering making Bengaluru stray-dog-free through vaccination and sheltering. The Karnataka High Court has also issued a notice to the state government on a PIL seeking effective stray dog management. In this interview with Citizen Matters, animal ecologist and conservation biologist Dr Abi Tamim Vanak weighs in on the issue. Dr Abi Vanak holds a PhD in Wildlife Science from the University of Missouri, USA. He is currently a Professor at ATREE (Asoka Trust…

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May 17th was a bad day for residents of three low-lying lanes at HBR 5th Block Layout, near Manyata Tech Park. That day's heavy downpour saw all their homes being flooded, causing losses of tens of thousands of rupees. K Sai Kiran, a resident, estimates his loss at Rs 79,000 from the heavy rain that day. This includes Rs 50,000 for damaged furniture, Rs 10,000 to fix damaged electrical appliances, Rs 15,000 for car repair, and Rs 4,000 to clean up the house. Another resident Vijay estimates his loss at Rs 60,000 from similar damage. Ashwini Sreetama says her losses…

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