CITIES
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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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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