Vehicles again in Cubbon Park? No WAY.

#TrafficFreeCubbonPark cd traffic restart? Letter written to Chief Sectretary on this below. #Heritagebeku petitioned this , shared expert opinions , after it was discussed and supported by both officers and ministers, and then unanimously passed on 30 June at BBMP Council. Cubbon Park, the flora & fauna, ecology and air flourishes during the lockdown with no traffic.

And now we #hear that in an absurd roll back to pre Covid Times , the GoK plans to restart traffic in Cubbon Park from Monday. Really ? For what joy?

Citizens have collaboratively worked on this and its a good thing - no more slaughter of Cubbon park. Like Lalbagh has for two decades, Cubbon Park must be traffic free too . Not rocket science.

Hope the GoK resolves it ASAP. Please share.

Links:

Petition: change.org/TrafficFreeCubbonPark

Blog link : https://www.heritagebeku.com/post/365-day-traffic-free-cubbon-park-it-s-our-central-lung-space-natural-heritage-myrighttobreathe

Mayor Support : https://twitter.com/bbmp_mayor/status/1277535689387593728?s=21

https://www.deccanherald.com/city/focus-bengaluru/cubbon-park-call-for-traffic-ban-856040.html

https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/convert-cubbon-park-to-no-traffic-zone/article31892923.ece

https://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/others/a-good-move-but-requires-caution/articleshow/64324505.cms

https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/2020/jun/23/stepping-up-for-lung-space-2159972.html

https://www.deccanherald.com/content/532893/can-cubbon-park-free-traffic.html

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Saturday, 22 August 2020

The Chief Secretary

Government of Karnataka

Vidhana Soudha

Bangalore 560001

Dear Sir:

Subject : Proposed Reintroduction of Vehicular Traffic in Cubbon Park wef 24 Aug 2020

#CubbonParkUlisi. Heritage Beku has made an impassioned appeal to the government to ensure that Cubbon Park , which has been untouched by traffic for the last five months of Covidand slowly regaining its air quality, greenery and flora & fauna ,and continue this traffic free status. We were glad that BBMP had passed this unanimously on 30 Jun 2020. We hear that this is rolled back, perhaps by oversight. While it may be untrue, we strongly protest any retrograde move to roll back Traffic Free Cubbon Park.

Please note that we had done the following:

1. One, an online petition (www.change.org/TrafficFreeCubbonPark) to confirm the basis on which a traffic free Cubbon Park is required for both the health of the city, the Park and its citizens. Expert opinions were taken

2. Second, we sent out a detailed letter to the Horticultural Secretary, BBMP commissioner & Horticulture Minister and your good self, summarizing our request and asking for action. Glad to hear that both the horticultural secretary , the BBMP commissioner as well as several ministers were positive about this and supported this excellent move to keep Cubbon Park pristine and pollution free.

3. Third, we also spoke to several other experts and gathered their inputs along with stakeholders like the traffic police, who felt that while managing full traffic might be difficult, a few changes in direction and one ways would resolve a lot of the problems, particularly given the metro and future suburban rail . We also spoke to several people on the provision of buggies, cycles and EV vehicles to support the elderly, differently abled and children to access and move around the park .

4. Fourth, a letter was sent to the Hon Mayor and he was gracious enough to completely support this idea and the various experts' opinion on the subject. The need for Traffic. Free Cubbon Park was presented to the BBMP Council on 30 June, and unanimously passed ( he extract of that meeting, and press clips on this is enclosed) .

5. Fifth, a dipstick study on current traffic movement by both citizens and the traffic police we consulted, shows hardly any traffic impact on this. In fact one of our team Mr Dugarreached the DCP Traffic Mr Narayan at that time, and he also had mentioned that it could one managed, provided the Hudson Circle area, stadium and one way were addressed.

Therefore we were surprised to hear today that Bengaluru Coordination Committee plans to reintroduce traffic back into Cubbon Park this Monday, thereby putting an end to the current ecological status , and the painstaking build-up of the precious environment and air quality of Cubbon Park in the last five months. The benefit of a few minutes of traffic speed is completely offset by its negative and irretrievable environmental impact. We finally had a chance to see Cubbon Park at itspristine, aesthetic and environmental best, just like the traffic free Lalbagh is. Now that we have seen and experienced how it benefited the park, it is a shame that our system chooses to rollback progress and good environmental practice by taking the easy route of infecting Cubbon Park with vehicles again.

As citizens & civil society we absolutely insist that you retractthis retrograde, disastrous move as this was already a settled matter. The citizens are united together on this issue and will stand tall to protect our beleaguered Cubbon Park from assaultby polluting vehicles. You are committed to the city and its sustainability too so we fully trust we have your full support on this. We look forward to a categoric confirmation on proceeding in the right direction on maintaining and protecting Cubbon Park.

#MyCity #MyRightToBreathe

Look forward to your prompt and positive response.

Thanking You

Yours Sincerely

Priya Chetty-Rajagopal

Heritage Beku

CC: All concerned

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Tourism Policy 2020 & Heritage

Hon Tourism Minister

Bangalore

Dear Sirs:

Given the alignment of heritage into the Tourism department we have been delighted to interact and meet with our Tourism Secy NR Anil Kumar and shared our perspectives last year. We hear the Tourism Policy is being worked on - We would be  very appreciative  if you could share with us the provisions of heritage under the draft tourism policy. We hope that you have considered and prioritised  heritage as it deserves. 

As you are aware heritageBeku is the premier citizen  initiative on heritage in Bangalore and has taken great interest, as well as had some significant impact on the space in Bangalore. We would also request if we could be made a part of the heritage deliberations in other tourism initiatives for the city and state as well so as to be able to share some of our suggestions, inputs on the the platform and showcasing of heritage of our beautiful city. 

I have already had the privilege of meeting with our Chief Secretary and Tourism Secretary with our team and I look forward to also meeting  with our Hon Tourism minister at the earliest.

We look forward to your response on this and to greater involvement and inclusion of #HeritageBeku in the Tourism department and policy. We hope that we can add  at some value representing as we do Citizen initiative and public discussion. 

Your sincerely

Priya Chetty-Rajagopal 

Newspaper Archives in Bangalore - a Heritage Link

How far back and how reliable is the record of our city history? Or any city, for that matter.

From #HeritageBeku at Bengaluru, we go back and forth on data and information needed. Photographs are especially critical. Access to newspaper archives especially state and city centric newspapers like Deccan Herald, Prajavani, Hindu etc are invaluable. In a tech city like Bengaluru, we take availability and access to digital content for granted.

Yet in a casual conversation with a friend and journalist, I was surprised that most of our Bangalore newspapers are not yet fully archived and accessible. Digital archives start only from around 2000. The question of cost model or subscription should be is secondary. I presume most of the archives are on micro fische and digitized but how is this vast data organised, accessible and searchable to us? Look at places like Britain where vast amounts of news, records, images and data are available in various libraries and organisations, serving a vast army of researchers , historians , academics and others.

Bangaloreans are passionate about their city, its history and its stories. Being able to access images, facts, dates and city milestones can hugely help a city that needs to be rooted in its past in order to carve out and influence its future. Perhaps we need to remind governments, foundations, think tanks and publications how important this is for a city and citizens and to allot the necessary time and resources to preserve , convert and access its past media and news. Don’t we own our collective past? Should we not pass it on to the next generations?

The legal, financial, operational, dissemination, technology, best practices, stakeholders etc aspects can be discussed in detail and fleshed out, but the in-principle agreement that we should have this in place is what I think we need right away . Technology firms have shown interest in archives - and Google funded a local newspaper archive in the UK in 2019 with Archant

I did some basic research and this is what I found.

Wikipedia says this about worldwide newspaper archiving:

'Most are scanned from microfilm into pdf, gif or similar graphic formats and many of the graphic archives have been indexed into searchable text databases utilizing optical character recognition (OCR) technology. Some newspapers do not allow access to the OCR-converted text until it is proofread. Older newspapers are still in image format, and newer newspapers are available as full text that can be cut and pasted. Most text is in ASCII, some are using Unicode for diacritical marks not available in ASCII.

Some local public libraries subscribe to certain online newspaper archives. For instance, some UK public libraries subscribe to The Times Digital Archive and any member of one of these libraries is able to access this resource free from their home computer using their library card number. In many instances, library access may be restricted to in-building use, in the confines of the library itself, and not a service otherwise available away from that structure to cardholders.'

In India these seem to be the only ones , states Wikipedia , and most newspapers are archived from primarily 2000 onwards only

1. ACQRO

2. The Sunday Street

3. CBI Roundup/IBT Roundup/Chota Roundup (1942-1946) Free (transcribed to text, most international articles left out)

4. Hicky's Bengal Gazette (1781) Free

5. The Hindu (2000– )

6. The Indian Express (2002– )

7. The Indian Express (1933–1994) via Google News Archive

8. Indian online newspaper and journal portal (1785–2003)

9. The Telegraph (1999– )

10. The Times of India (2001– )

11. EBM News (2015– )

12. The Sunday Street

13. Archives of the Press Academy of Andhra Pradesh. Free Includes more than 20 newspapers in Telugu and Urdu. The earliest dates from 1914. Also hosts magazines and periodicals. '

This is a topic that does not seem to have been extensively researched, or where data, tools are available even given the limited internet searches I did. I was forwarded this Google News link for the 1 Aug 1950 edition of the Indian Express and was delighted. It seems that Prajavani has some records in the World Congress library, but Deccan Herald or The Hindu does not feature. One must find out how Prajavani happened - should be an interesting story with some takeaways for us.

Ammu Joseph, acclaimed journalist & activist has actuallly written about this in her book ‘Whose News’ and ruefully shared : ‘I don't know if things have improved (🤞🏼) but when Kalpana Sharma and I were researching media coverage of various issues back in the late 90s, the situation was so bad that we actually wrote about the pathetic state of newspaper archives then. And we were only trying to access editions going back some 20 years.

The Hindu (only in Chennai) was one of the most organised - on microfilm then, if I remember right. The Bangalore edition, though, was another story: old copies were kept only for three months and then destroyed (or probably sold as raddi).

Some of the dusty "archives" of bound hard copies - of The Statesman, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Indian Express - had to be seen to be believed.

The best source then was the Nehru Memorial Library in Delhi (also on microfilm). But who knows what has happened to that institution and its holdings in view of developments over the past few years.

I hope the advent of more convenient digital technology has led to some improvement. But the last time I checked even The Hindu's digital archive didn't go back more than a couple of decades at most. ‘

Extracts of ‘Whose News‘ book is below:

Meera K, Founder of Citizen Matters responded to Ammu Joseph’s comment with a worrying anecdote of her own : ‘25 years ago, I chanced upon the archive section of the Madras University library (on the Marina) -- found century old newspaper copies all brittle and flaking - the entire room was in a mess, with stuff lying on the ground too..’

Time for looking back insightfully, now.

Shouldnt this be our right as citizens? Lets give this some attention? Please share your thoughts in the comment section and share with Interested or concerned people or experts .