My Experience with Prasiddhi Forest Foundation and The Green Pillar
This internship provided me with the platform to learn, ideate, and execute my skills with hands-on research experience, learning throughout each step of the process. I’m grateful to Prasiddhi Forest Foundation and The Green Pillar for giving me a wonderful opportunity to grow and work on myself as an individual and as a team while also addressing these pressing issues.
Understanding Bangalore’s Micro-Environment
For this project, I worked on the problem statement provided by the Prasiddhi Forest Foundation and The Green Pillar, examining how everyday urban behaviours, business practices, and governance decisions collectively shape the micro-environmental health in Indian cities. I chose my city, Bangalore, as the focus city because, as one of India’s fastest-growing urban centres, it presents a unique mix of rapid development, high population density, and ongoing environmental challenges. This made it an ideal setting to study localised issues like noise, dust, and air pollution.
By analysing policies, public engagement mechanisms, and on-ground realities, I aimed to understand how these factors interact to influence the city’s micro-environment and identify areas where interventions could be most impactful.
Through My Lens: Observing Urban Environmental Issues in the “Garden City of India”
Micro environmental issues refer to small-scale, localized environmental problems that directly impact people and ecosystems in a specific area, such as a neighborhood, street, school, workplace, or small urban zone. Unlike large-scale issues like global warming, issues such as noise pollution at city centres, urban heat islands, Lack of green spaces, etc, go unnoticed or are disregarded as “normal”. Why does this happen? Well, there are several reasons, the most common being that they are so routine or, at times, not visible, that people are desensitized to them. They are often overlooked for the “Bigger picture”. If left untreated, they might have dire consequences in the long run for every soul in and around the area.
So the question arises as to who is responsible and how it is being managed. My team and I worked the same. While some focused on the general public and some on health professions, I mostly focused on government officials and Urban planners. I started my research by learning the existing policies and installations in my city, Bangalore. Doing so was helpful to know what my stance was and how I’d question my stakeholders. The city had basic policies enforced regarding noise limits, environmental clearances, etc. But there wasn’t any particular focus or department working exclusively towards the problem. Noise and air pollution rank amongst the top for their prevalence and the rate of growth 95% and 90% respectively. This formed a strong foundation for me to proceed.
In a very brief research conducted of the government officials (n=27), we realised that 92.6%(25) and 88.8%(24) of them knew accurately the policy interventions and implementations regarding air and sewage related factors, but only 40.7% (11) knew about dust related factors and a mere 22.2%(6) knew about noise. A mixed response regarding the awareness among the officials concerned the quality and the amount of thought given to such factors. When asked about regular medical professionals’ involvement in making and amending the policies, 25 of them stated that they rely on the standard numbers passed down by the higher officials. 14 of them added that minimum help was consulted, and 6 admitted to not having used any medical professionals’ interventions. With the health factor being at risk, vulnerable groups are the first to be affected.
So how inclusive are the policies and implementations for them? When asked, 23 out of 27 replied that the existing implementations are not inclusive. This means that there exists a connection gap between the public and the government. The “public eye app”(15) and society meets(18) seem to be the most popular ways to reach out to the government. So why are the implementations failing?
Well, according to the officials, funding is the most raised concern(25), followed by population rise(18) and incorporation of the public(16). A few also added that there lies a miscommunication in terms of the responsibility of work between major offices(11).
In addition to this, we also enquired the traffic police (n=15) regarding health conditions they’ve encountered in their respective tenure. The following were the findings – hearing loss (14), exhaustion (13), fatigue (12), mental stress (9), high bp (7), irregular bp (3), temper (3), fainting (2), tinnitus (2), breathing issues (2), asthma (2), heatstroke (1).
Architects are emerging as the group likely to bring about a change in urban planning and structure. They carry along with them a world of fresh ideas that are surreal as well as sustainable. They are deeply involved in on-ground implementations and user engagement, and also act as mediators between the public and the government. But they, too, are facing challenges in finding their footing. In a survey (n=12), architects raised their concerns for not being in the mainstream urban planning as — Government barely consulted/neglected (10), Lower payment contract by government (9), Called too late in the process (8), Lesser recognition in public (5).
My Key Takeaways From the Project
Through various short research studies, we were able to draw a few conclusions:
- There lies a gap in environmental management priorities.
- Top-down governance dominates, with limited active engagement mechanisms for citizens.
- Systemic hurdles (like funding and internal inefficiencies) in implementing or sustaining improvements.
- A chronic stress environment has been created due to the existing pollution, and is likely worsened by poor urban planning and enforcement.
- A systematic lack of institutional engagement with private firms during planning or decision-making phases.
This internship offered hands-on research experience while deepening my understanding of how policies, public behaviour, and urban planning interact to shape environmental outcomes. It highlighted the value of careful observation, teamwork, and critical thinking in tackling real-world environmental challenges.
If you’d like to share your internship experience with us or explore future internships, collaborations, or research opportunities, write to us at communications@thegreenpillar.com. Join our global tribe, #HealOurEarth, and let’s co-create sustainable futures for generations to come!
