Creating a filthy future, heap by heap
| Date :05-Jul-2019 |
Just outside IGMC Wall, Mominpura Road (July 4)
By Rahul Dixit:
SWACHCH NAGPUR!!!!!
THE annual first round of ‘Spirit of Mumbai’ is over in the State capital. Rains pounded and hounded Mumbaikars, whose own contribution to the regular tribulation was much more than the civic authorities. Miles away, Nagpur seems to be treading the same path, piling up garbage all around the city with impunity. Filth, defiled corners, heaps of trash, and unbearable stench have found permanent residency in every locality. So much for a would-be Smart City! Nagpur may not become Mumbai so soon but the way people are emulating all the dirty habits and stashing the roadsides with plastic, garbage, leftover food items and with a weak mechanism to clear the mess, the city certainly faces a filthy future. It takes hardly fifteen minutes to turn a good spot into a garbage dump.
(left) North side of Gandhi Sagar (July 4 (right) Near Poddareshwar Ram Mandir, Hansapuri (July 4)
Try it yourself! Throw some trash and see how the society, following a herd-mentality, joins you within minutes in defacing the spot. Such spots are found everywhere, every nook and corner, with mounds of waste lying unattended for days. Of course, the city is blessed with some good-natured, concerned souls who make it a point to keep the environs clean. They go out of their way to clear the litter thrown around. They try to inculcate a good habit through projects and programmes, inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Swachch Bharat’ project. But their number is too small. The garbage dumps through which we find our way out daily are the symbols of how a good initiative is defeated. Every stakeholder -- municipal corporation, government machinery, and general public -- are equally responsible for this mess. There is constant buck-passing among all these elements. Nobody is ready to take responsibility. On its part, the NMC is trying to evolve newer ways to deal with the problem by making concrete plans for segregation of waste, giving GPS watches to sanitation staff to catch the non-workers.
Yet, precious little is being achieved for want of reciprocal support from the waste generators -- the citizens. How helpless a corporator feels by people’s contempt for cleanliness can be gauged from the picture in Sitabuldi area. The lady corporator, Ujjwala Sharma, stays right opposite a spot that has changed into a garbage dump. Despite her appeals and threats of imposing fine nothing has changed. The narrow road has become narrower as most part is occupied by trash thrown primarily by the staffers of budget hotels and lodges that have sprung up in the locality. The corporation, too, has played its part by removing the garbage bin from the spot in its effort to garner a few brownie points in the Smart City survey that seeks a bin-less city. It has only given rise to the ‘bin Ladens’ who strike at will throwing buckets full of crap.
This place in Temple Bazar is an interesting study example. It had a garbage bin in one corner where all the waste used to be collected. Someone from the political community suddenly thought of beautifying the spot with a landscape and the bin was removed. And now the entire locality walks through mounds of plastic, food items and what not. Every street has its own story. And hardly any story has a happy ending. Some intelligent brains do try to change the situation with smart ideas like installing stone idols resembling God. Hardly a few have managed to dissuade people from throwing garbage. And we are supposed to be God-fearing people! Yet, being a People’s Paper, we at ‘The Hitavada’ will continue to show the reality -- through reports, but mainly through photographs as visual, substantial, and unquestionable proof of how many of us collude to ensure that the city lives almost as in hell. For, a future Smart City cannot afford a filthy future.