Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Pranay Kotasthane’s post on the history of how the water situation in Bangalore has evolved was highly informative. “First, half of the city’s water supply comes from Kaveri, which is 90 km away and 350 m lower.” That “350 m lower ” part is very significant. First, it means the water has to be lifted. The electricity bill for lifting comes to ₹3 crores per day. Second: “Before independence, Bengaluru, due to its elevation, relied largely on the rainwater stored in nearby lakes. But as the city population grew, the engineering marvel of pumping water up from the Kaveri was dreamed and realised.” In turn, that led to a decrease in the dependence on lakes. As the lakes fell into disuse, encroachments began to increase. Since the lakes had begun to matter less (at that point), the pushback against encroachment was proportionally low.   Historically, the other half of the city’s water needs were met by groundwater. But, as the city began to grow with tech parks followed by ...

The RTI Act (Right to Information gave anyone the right to ask for information & the government had to respond to it. Within certain limits and categories, of course. Plus, it forced every public authority to computerize their records for wide dissemination and to proactively publish certain categories of information so that the citizens need minimum recourse to request for information formally. But is providing access to information enough to empower people? No, says Mike Gurstein who analyzed the impact of the digitization of land records in Bangalore: “Their findings were that newly available access to land ownership and title information in Bangalore was primarily being put to use by middle and upper income people and by corporations to gain ownership of land from the marginalized and the poor. The newly digitized and openly accessible data allowed the well-to-do to take the information provided and use that as the basis for instructions to land surveyors and lawyer...