Bengaluru rains | Varthur, Whitefield roads inundated following just an hour of showers
The Hindu
Rainfall in Bengaluru on September 18 evening turned many roads into puddles while traffic came to a standstill in the IT hub of Varthur and Whitefield after two Road Under Bridges (RUB) in Panathur and on Croma Road were inundated.
The rainfall on September 18 evening turned many roads in Bengaluru into puddles while traffic came to a standstill in the IT hub of Varthur and Whitefield after two Road Under Bridges (RUB) in Panathur and on Croma Road were inundated. The car of an IT employee was reportedly submerged near the Croma Road RUB.
Residents of these areas reported that they are fed up with Ministers, including Chief Minister Siddaramaiah (before elections) making false assurances of fixing the issue of flooding, which is mostly a result of encroachment of rajakaluves (storm water drains).
To attract more attention to the problem, the residents on September 19 christened Croma Road RUB as Kanakana Kindi.
“The residents staying here are large contributors to the city’s economy and yet, the conditions here are so bad. With the storm water drains (SWDs) overflowing, even human waste was floating around on the roads,” said Jagadish Reddy, a citizen activist from Varthur. “The Croma Road RUB is built on an SWD and is illegal. However, we have to use that road, as there is no other option.”
The residents pointed out that Panathur Road, which is very narrow, should be widened to avoid traffic snarls when it rains. “The road is approximately 15 feet wide while the population there is around 1 lakh. The road needs to be widened immediately,” Mr Reddy said. “As funds have been stopped for projects in Bengaluru, we want the Chief Minister to use his discretionary powers and provide immediate attention to these problems.”
Balagere Road and Whitefield Main Road were also severely inundated during the rains, residents said.
Bengaluru recorded around 2 centimetres of rainfall on September 18. Officials of India Meteorological Department (IMD) Bengaluru said that this was a normal quantum of rainfall for the month of September.
“Writing, in general, is a very solitary process,” says Yauvanika Chopra, Associate Director at The New India Foundation (NIF), which, earlier this year, announced the 12th edition of its NIF Book Fellowships for research and scholarship about Indian history after Independence. While authors, in general, are built for it, it can still get very lonely, says Chopra, pointing out that the fellowship’s community support is as valuable as the monetary benefits it offers. “There is a solid community of NIF fellows, trustees, language experts, jury members, all of whom are incredibly competent,” she says. “They really help make authors feel supported from manuscript to publication, so you never feel like you’re struggling through isolation.”
Several principals of government and private schools in Delhi on Tuesday said the Directorate of Education (DoE) circular from a day earlier, directing schools to conduct classes in ‘hybrid’ mode, had caused confusion regarding day-to-day operations as they did not know how many students would return to school from Wednesday and how would teachers instruct in two modes — online and in person — at once. The DoE circular on Monday had also stated that the option to “exercise online mode of education, wherever available, shall vest with the students and their guardians”. Several schoolteachers also expressed confusion regarding the DoE order. A government schoolteacher said he was unsure of how to cope with the resumption of physical classes, given that the order directing government offices to ensure that 50% of the employees work from home is still in place. On Monday, the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) had, on the orders of the Supreme Court, directed schools in Delhi-NCR to shift classes to the hybrid mode, following which the DoE had issued the circular. The court had urged the Centre’s pollution watchdog to consider restarting physical classes due to many students missing out on the mid-day meals and lacking the necessary means to attend classes online. The CAQM had, on November 20, asked schools in Delhi-NCR to shift to the online mode of teaching.