Published in Dwarka Express on 22.10.22

“Clean City, Green City!”, this catchphrase signposts may be seen in almost all cities in India. Indubitably both are important. But is it true that the authorities focus and balance both the activities concurrently? Cleaning is assigned normally to Municipalities, while development authorities may focus on greening. Ultimately lack of coordination, jurisdictional hitches and infra expansion line-ups result in felling of trees and end in denudation of the potential green belts on the one side while garbage piles up in unauthorised areas. It’s in fact typical of any metro.

Recently in Bangalore outskirts, when the Panchayat authorities for removal of garbage from an unauthorised dumping yard, the Panchayat development officer (PDO) lamented over his continuous effort which never yielded results due to callousness of the locals. His bone of contention was that locals dump the garbage in the empty plot on the sides of the road and pleaded helplessness in handling the perpetrators of the unauthorised dumping. He even attempted erecting a board warning Rs 1000 penalty on those who dump in the site. Notwithstanding the billboards in local language, it appears that no one cares. In the PDO’s view, it’s difficult to monitor the culprits 24×7. And thus, there is no solution yet.

A suggestion was given to him to plant trees in the identified unauthorised dumping spots to discourage dumping. Hailing the idea, he arranged a massive tree planting drive for the entire stretch. For a few days, there was no littering in the location but after the transitory gap, dumping rejuvenated. The planted saplings scuffle to pop out of the dumpsite, thanks to the heavy deluge in the recent months.

So, one may conclude that greening or cleaning are two different tasks and just the slogan ‘clean and green’ goes cool. Bangalore, was one known as Garden city, but with the spurt in population, it is going to wane. The once ‘Garden’ city has now the dubious ‘honour’ of being known as ‘Garbage’ City. Neither cleaning, nor greening, it is the civic sense which is more important and both people and policy makers are to blame for the malady