HasiruUsiru Meeting : 31st May, 2008

Venue : Civic,Langford Road

Point 1: the protest.

If we do a protest on Nanda Road, we need to have our goals clear, and our facts straight. We are not opposed to the Metro at a high level, but we are concerned about the way the infrastructure will be set up for the Metro. One our our main aims is to save the trees of Bangalore, Nanda Road is a symbol of Green Bangalore, and hence we plan to protest there.

About facts, we need to educate ourselves on the social, economic and environmental impact of the Metro. We should study the documents on the Metro's website. We should find out how much of Lalbagh is going to be taken over by the Metro. Kathyayini brough out the point that a number of issues/concerns that have been raised about the Metro have not been fixed. Do we really need the Malls and shops that have currently been planned?

We are postponing the protest to get enough time to publicise, and hopefully get a very good turnout.

TODO items:

1. Try and involve folks who have been involved in discussions and actions about the Metro in the past.
2. Fix the protest date. Kanishka will set up a poll on HU about this. The choices currently are June 29 or July 6.
3. Schools and Colleges are opening now. Try and get the kids to come. National College in Jayanagar is one such candidate.
4. Involve Hawker's associations, and residents associations.
5. Fix the _exact_ location for the protest.
6. Get police permission for the protest.
7. Frame an email that we will send out on mailing lists. Maybe, a bulleted list with 4-5 main goals and objectives which we are trying to achieve.
8. Get folks from the media (journalists from Hindu and Deccan Herald that people at the meeting knew) that we can ask to publicize the event, apart from a press conference.


Point 2: the PIL.

Divya brought out the point that one of the judges was difficult to convince of the problems of tree-felling. We also now know that the number of roads to be widened has gone up to 95. Also, the lawyer has said that now, since the PIL has been admitted, the protest should not be a problem to hold.

Point 3: talking to the BMTC

We should continue the talks that we had with Mr. Dastgir Sharief, either with him or Mr. Tripathi. We should follow up on some of the topics we had discussed, like the website, Mr Parmeshwar's proposal, etc.