A 21-year-old man was almost crushed to death when the hydraulic doors of a BMTC bus closed in on him on Sunday evening. Prannoy David Rao hurt his shoulders and chest but what hurt more was the reaction of those around: The bus conductor yelled at him and some passengers guffawed at his plight instead of rescuing him.

When the KSPCB sent us a notice for the first time in May, '07, I, as the then President of the association, raised a query with them as under:

Ours is a high-rise apartment complex comprising 126 dwelling units, situated at the above address. The only waste we generate is the sewage from toilets which is discharged into the BWSSB sewage line running below the main road adjoining our complex, for which BWSSB is levying us a 'sanitory charge', as a part of the monthly water bill. As such, please advise on what basis your organisation should be levying any annual 'consent fee' on our complex.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has long been a hot topic globally. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has lectured companies on it. Some corporations have won acclaim and awards for CSR. Two of them were BP, the oil giant, and Goldman Sachs, the big investment bank. Every year, the World Economic Forum lists the "Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations". BP has made the list many times. So has Goldman Sachs, for its work on climate change and carbon trading.

 Browsing through all the posts under the topic of living->environment, I was surprised to find no material around green belt or plan for urban forests etc. Discovered that the so called green topics on this site, are reflex reactions to posts on the traffic & road widening threads. Thought of digging into this concept of green belt which existed in Ramakrishna Hegde's time.