City: Bengaluru

I have been living, eating, breathing, and sleeping plastics. And I am not saying this, as a campaigner or as an anti plastic advocate, or because I have been following the discussions of the #GlobalPlasticTreaty. I am saying this literally. “We all are”. The latest pointer to the all pervasiveness of plastic pollution being the discovery of  microplastics in human blood. There have been other studies that have shown plastic ingestion by fish and other marine mammals, by insects and birds, apart from studies that plastic is in our water and food.   So, how much more proof do we need? Do…

"I know my identity is much more than bipolar disorder. It is just one part of my life”. Those are the words of US-based scientist Dr Yamini (name changed), who has continues to live her life with conviction, while living with Bipolar. On the occasion of World Bipolar Day (March 30), Citizen Matters interviewed Dr Yamini on how she has coped with life and her illness. And how others can learn to cope with similar conditions. Dr Yamini graduated in Engineering from one of India’s top Indian Engineering institutes, and moved to the US where she completed her PhD. She has…

Indian cities have long suffered the absence of coherent and consistent policy-making on urbanisation. As a result, they are plagued by governance deficits, inadequate infrastructure, poor land management, unequal access to clean drinking water, repeated bouts of flooding, severe densification of some areas and poor quality of air and public spaces.  For Devashish Dhar, a former public policy specialist at NITI Aayog, these are evidence of Indian cities being a blind spot in planning and policy. In India's Blind Spot: Understanding and Managing Our Cities (Harper Collins India, 2023), Dhar examines historical processes that led to haphazard development of Indian…

One of the biggest developments from India at the COP27 held in November 2022 in Sharm-el Sheikh, Egypt, was the announcement of a Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategy. This took place at the India pavilion, highlighting the theme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s LiFE (Lifestyle For Environment) initiative. LiFE aims to begin ‘a mass movement of environmentally conscious lifestyles that practise mindful and deliberate utilisation, instead of mindless and destructive consumption’. The energy sector has the potential to adopt such practices, cause shifts in demand behaviour and reduce emissions. The concept of an environmentally conscious lifestyle is not new. But…

“Trams still run on 40 routes in Melbourne with millions of users,” says former tram conductor Roberto D'Andrea, who along with his fellow conductor Tony Graham travelled from Melbourne to Calcutta in February to promote the five-day Tramjatra festival. “It is not merely a heritage ride but used daily by commuters as part of the public transit system”. Calcutta is no Melbourne. But it can boast of two firsts: The first Indian city to build a metro line. And the only city to still have functional tram lines. The Calcutta metro of course gets all the attention and money. The…