HOT TOPICS
SPOTLIGHT AGENCIES
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56 motorized sky walks for pedestrians! silkboard - 30-DEC-2007
Not that BBMP doesn't care for pedestrians. They have been talking about motorized sky walks for sometime now, and earlier this week, a BBMP tender showed up with plans for sky walks all around the city - 56 of them, and with escalators! "These sky walks are proposed with attractive escalators of adequate capacity on both sides of the road which shall facilitate the vertical movement of the users for climbing as well alighting purposes" As I said, the fancy skywalk talk isn't new. Earlier this year, BBMP had plans for 30 "capsule lift" based sky walks, refer this tender dated 12th Feb 2007: |
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Sakrama - setting things right? silkboard - 3-DEC-2007
Saturday afternoon, I spotted this notice in front of a commercial building in Banashankari. One look at the building, and I could guess what it could be. The building has a basement - must have been approved for parking usage - that houses retail stores. [PS: obfuscated the address etc from photo] After looking at this BBMP notice, this is what I was thinking. How many commercial buildings of this size (not too large, not too small) would have violations? From what I see, perhaps a good 30-40%. If you include the newly added peripheral areas (the new B in BBMP), I bet the percentage would be higher.
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silkboard - 18-NOV-2007
How would you like the ability to watch and follow all work that our local governments do? All concerned citizens want it. A lot of work needs to happen though to make such a thing possible. Fancy websites for bodies like BBMP and BMRC are only the face, there need to be internal government systems to store and expose the information about their workings. And then you need easy to use tools that sarkaari babus and engineers would use to enter information into these systems. Forget the technicalities for a moment. What we want is this. Tender gets floated for a work, we see it. We should then see all the bids, and the winner. And then on, the status and progress of work. Last, after the work gets completed, the details of how it was signed off as completed or successful. |
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BG Road Hosur Road shortcut and BBMP's road work silkboard - 12-NOV-2007
- Improvements and Asphalting to road from Begur road to Hosur main road via Hongasandra Garvebavipalya (1st Main Road) - 30 lakhs. - Improvements and Asphalting the Devarachikkanahalli main road (Begur road connecting Vijayabank layout) - 30 lakhs. |
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namithavarma - 5-NOV-2007I am a journalism student and would like to know your reactions to the spelling mistakes, or other problems that u find with bmponline.org. Can anyone pls help me out? How can the website made better? My email id is varmanamitha@gmail.com Pls get back to me... |
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Roads over storm water drains - what happened? silkboard - 16-OCT-2007
Remember this interesting call for expression of interest that appeared on BBMP website earlier this year (here): "BBMP intends to create a road net work above the main storm water drain wherever feasible ... total length of primary and secondary drain net work is 250 km spread over the entire city." |
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Bangalore, demolitions, media etc silkboard - 15-OCT-2007
Demolitions have been making news every other week, looks like BBMP is going to keep their razors up even after the rains are gone. Papers report today (online link unavailable) that BBMP is set to demolish parts of the club-house of Koramangala National Games village. It was reported earlier that the club-house was situated atop Raja Kaluve. I found this news report - Portions of nine buildings demolished in Puttenahalli - interesting for the last paragraph it carries. |
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silkboard - 30-SEP-2007
Literally no peace or silence. Hear it all loud and clear when any of your neighbors talk. So called 'individual' houses, most of them joined with one another at hips. No air or space between them. 8 to 10 feet wide roads (practically speaking), dotted with cars, and cobwebbed with cables of all sorts - tv, telephone and electricity in that order. [flickr-photo:id=1070869665,size=m][flickr-photo:id=1070868895,size=m][flickr-photo:id=1071734032,size=m] |
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Choked Bangalore - Heart of the matter? silkboard - 23-SEP-2007
The best piece of news I have heard this month came last week. It goes "BBMP to book crook engineers". Its something we all know and suspect to be true for ever now, and the plan to break the so called 'nexus' is ambitious: "BBMP will book the engineers of the erstwhile CMCs and TMC who have sanctioned projects on storm water drains, valleys, in agricultural lands etc. ... Taking a serious note of rampant violation of zoning regulations and building bylaws, the BBMP ... will trace these officials ... and recommend action against them ... In the wake of demolitions being carried out across the city, the BBMP has stumbled on several cases where engineers have encouraged encroachments in exchange for kickbacks running into lakhs of rupees." Not that we haven't heard similar language before, but there is an interesting twist to BBMP's threat this time.
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Who is it - city government or us? silkboard - 12-SEP-2007
How interesting to see different media houses use varying headlines to describe one same PriceWaterhouseCooper (PWC) survey on Bangalore city and governance. - "We're to blame for city's woes" says Times of India Bangalore - "Bangaloreans rue city governance" goes NDTV - "B'lore citizens seek better urban governance" went the source at PTI Here are some interesting notings from this PWC survey:
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A good shortcut from Banerghatta road to Hosur road might be possible sometime soon. I dont really know the location of all the villages and layouts mentioned, but looks like BBMP is upgrading and asphalting a lot of roads in the Bommanahalli/Begur, Arekere area. Sample some: