MoM with Prof TV Ramachandran

Attendees: Neha Dar, Jim Gowda and myself.

We meet Prof Ramachandran from Center for Ecological Studies, IISc this saturday. Even though, he blasted us for not doing anything after our last meeting with him (read about it here), he spent over 2 hours with us discussing this project among other things. I like to call this meeting "He pulled up our socks" session.

Some of the points which were discussed are

• Even though BWSSB has water shortage, it gives an NOC to new construction projects saying something to the effect that "a connection will be provided when water is available". Once these constructions get this NOC from BWSSB other agencies such as pollution control board etc do not have any criteria based on which they deny them an NOC. We live in a state where it has become essential for government agencies to show high revenues, sometimes at potentially inexplicable costs. BWSSB gets something to the tune of 30 lacs to over a crore depending on the size of the construction. He pushed Jim to act like a responsible citizen and file a PIL against BWSSB asking them on what grounds they were giving such NOCs to which Jim's response was that he is helpless.
• A bit off topic, but Prof mentioned that there are clear guidelines for the height to which commercial buildings can be constructed based on the width of the roads around them. These guidelines were clearly violated in the case of Mantri Mall. Now since the mall is complete, it will result in further tree cutting. Prof again suggested that Jim should file a PIL asking how such violations were allowed. Jim again wiggled out explaining his HELPLESSNESS.
• We should contact department of mines and geology. They have a lot of data on ground water which will be useful for us.
• On the issue of lake encroachment, prof had done a study on the lines of economic valuation of a lake. The idea was that people think that economic value is being generated by the encroachment of lakes so he set about calculating the economic value of a lake if it is well taken care of. He suggested we should go through his study.
• He suggested we use land satellite data to track the hyacinth and size of lakes. It would require some effort because we will have to spend some time in understanding the images and connecting them to political map of bangalore using topo sheets.
• Another issue he brought out was that every agency has different para state boundaries. BBMP has wards, BWSSB has zones and same is the case with other agencies. He suggested Praja takes up a project to make all the agencies use the same map.
• He suggested that we should also get in touch with Central Ground water commission as well.

@Jim, Neha: Feel free to add anything that I may have missed out.