Latest news with #CivisFoundation
Time of India
5 days ago
- General
- Time of India
Lack of infra for solid waste management key concern among citizens, shows BMC public consultation
Mumbai: The BMC received 2,774 responses during its large-scale public consultation on its Draft Solid Waste Management Bye-Laws 2025, held from April 1 to May 31. The consultation, supported by the Civis Foundation, aimed to capture citizens' lived experiences and actionable suggestions. Key concerns raised by citizens included a lack of infrastructure for waste segregation, irregular garbage collection, insufficient bins, and challenges in high-density settlements. Respondents also flagged underutilised composting systems and demanded decentralised alternatives such as micro-composters. While the BMC recently announced its move to defer the implementation of a user fee for the collection of solid waste, feedback on user fee was sought under the process, and mixed responses were received: 49% supported it, while 43% opposed it, citing fairness and confusion. As for fines in cases like littering or urinating in public spaces, 52% felt these would improve civic behaviour, but 66% wanted these implemented only after toilets and bins were in place. Only 39% of citizens found daily waste segregation practical. Mumbai generates 8,000 tonnes of solid waste daily, a majority of which ends up at the Kanjurmarg dumping ground and a smaller portion at the Deonar landfill. The draft bye-laws, proposed to replace the ones from 2006, were uploaded on the BMC website on April 1. Citizens were able to review the draft and submit their suggestions or objections until May 31 via email or several other means. At 2,418, most responses came via a WhatsApp chatbot, with the remainder through emails, town halls and field interviews. Deputy municipal commissioner for solid waste management Kiran Dighavkar said Civis was appointed specifically for gathering feedback from all sectors of society, from slums to formal housing. "We are looking at finalising the bye-laws in a month," he said. Civis, a non-profit that partners with govts to enable informed public participation in policymaking, is the BMC's official consultation partner for the initiative. It developed a WhatsApp chatbot that allows citizens to understand the solid waste draft in minutes and share their suggestions with the BMC. Civic officials pointed out that many citizens focused on everyday sanitation and waste segregation, but certain topics — such as construction and demolition waste, disaster-time waste handling, biomedical waste segregation, and extended producer responsibility (EPR) compliance — saw limited engagement. Several suggestions received strong public support, including multilingual IEC (information, education, and communication) campaigns for community engagement, school-based civic education, and the appointment of local waste ambassadors. Other suggestions included the introduction of night-time waste collection shifts for markets and arterial roads, replacement of cash fines with QR code-based challans, creation of public dashboards to track ward-wise performance on sanitation, fines and compliance, and the development of pilot zones with strict enforcement and reward systems to create replicable "clean ward" models.
New York Times
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Fisher Center at Bard Announces Civis Hope Commissions
Hope may seem daring in this age of angst and uncertainty, but it is at the heart of three major new works coming to the Fisher Center at Bard, including a musical adaptation of 'Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,' the performing arts center announced on Tuesday. With a $2.5 million gift from the Civis Foundation, matched by Bard College for an initial endowment of $5 million, the Fisher Center said it would create the Civis Hope Commissions, a program to support 'contemporary artists who will examine, interrogate and transform American artifacts, archival materials or artworks from the past to imagine a more perfect, just and hopeful future.' Gideon Lester, the Fisher Center's artistic director and chief executive, described the program in an interview as 'a rallying cry for the possibility of art.' 'Art can describe things as they might be,' he said, 'and see things not only as they are framed by the current news cycle. Great art has the ability to shift our consciousness and show us what we might become if we were really inhabiting our best selves. That's what these commissions are really about.' The Civis Hope Commissions are intended to continue in perpetuity, but the Fisher Center announced three projects to start: 'Jubilee,' a new musical with a libretto by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, based on Scott Joplin's opera 'Treemonisha'; Courtney Bryan's first opera, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams's 'Suddenly Summer'; and the 'Yentl' musical, which will be the celebrated director Barrie Kosky's first project developed in the United States. These commissions had already been in the works at the Fisher Center, but were chosen for the Civis program because they fit its mandate, Lester said, adding that working under the Civis umbrella allowed him and the artists 'an opportunity to think about them in a new way.' Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
