Let us not leave it to the government alone

Let us not leave it to the government alone
Come together to clear the civic mess plaguing the city
N Reguraj


Recent incidents in Australia involving our cricket team and the removal of an umpire for bad decisions, have clearly illustrated what a mass movement can achieve. Every Indian came on a common platform on the issue of bad umpiring. Never before in recent years, barring the Indo-Pak wars, have we seen such a critical mass joining hands for one single purpose.
This is exactly what needs to be done to solve the multifarious problems of Bangalore —- be it traffic, open drains, poor roads, waste management, not to speak of government lethargy. We need to mobilize ourselves as stakeholders to improve the situation in Bangalore, just as the entire nation came together to protest against injustice to its cricket team.
It can be done if all of us — industry, the general public, corporation and local government —come together and create an everrising ‘environment tindex’, a scorecard to bring about awareness on important issues plaguing the city.
Take, for example, the issue of rail and road connectivity to the upcoming Devanahalli airport. Almost till end of 2007, there was virtual inaction. Now that the airport is all set to start operating from March this year, both the authorities and people have woken up to the urgency of the situation. It is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse — of what use is a modern airport facility if one cannot access it easily? One big hurdle in implementation of any public project is the large number of agencies involved.
The ground reality is that the BBMP chief finds it difficult even to remove a mere electric pole. Yet, connectivity to the airport is happening, even if rather late in the day. Enhanced public awareness has made a difference here. That the ‘environment index’ is rising is undeniable, going by rising people’s participation in all walks of life. Today, people often talk about a host of violations relating to unauthorised buildings. Rules and byelaws are broken with impunity.
But perhaps these wrongdoings could have been arrested if the environment index had been made to rise at an earlier stage. We are now reduced to coping with a situation where the ecology of virtually every village, town, or for that matter even city, has been disturbed.
But it is never too late to act. Industry associations — whether it is CII, BCIC, other small and big associations— and the general public can come together on a common platform to greater awareness on civic and environmental issues.
Recent developments relating to the public toilets that were built with the initiative of Sudha Murty come to mind. These were set up with great fanfare—-clean toilets were a luxury in the city till recently. What has happened to them now? The same toilets are in a mess.
Why? Because it was left entirely to the authorities to maintain them. This situation could have been avoided through greater public-private participation. Surely, it would not be difficult for a group of people from the localities and areas concerned to get together to raise a minimum corpus required to appoint appropriate persons to sustain and maintain the toilets.
Likewise, we complain constantly about the poor state of public transport, claiming it to be dirty, unreliable and unusable, to say the least. Greater involvement and creation of an appropriate environment by stakeholders would help improve the situation.
The PPP model, therefore, is important as it is not merely the government that is the stakeholder. The public, the industry and related bodies are equally responsible for making that big difference to Bangalore—- so that there is awareness on issues like rain harvesting and waste management, to cite but two examples.
Jamshedpur township is an ISO-14000 certified city. Surely, it is not difficult for Bangalore to get a similar certification. For a start, all industries and institutions, big and small, can go for it. It would create the required environment.
This can be done. All it takes is a change in our outlook. We need not depend on the government for everything. As part of the PPP initiative, we could adopt a cluster approach where like-minded people in every area could come together to take up specific responsibilities. This would have a spiralling effect and raise the environment index of the city.
Change can be brought about only if we have the passion to do so. If it worked for us in Australia, why not in Bangalore?
(The writer is chairman, CII, Karnataka) FEEDBACK Readers respond to last week’s BIG IDEA
Effective traffic management ‘Can we Travel Together’ was a wonderful article and we must appreciate the optimistic outlook of the author. What it failed to consider were the various cabs and other vehicles which need to operate round the clock. IT as an industry is a big contributor to Bangalore’s growth. It is inevitable that this growth will be accompanied with the increase in the number of vehicles and other pollutants. What we need is to manage traffic. One finds HTVs operating within the city limits during peak hours. The logical solution is to declare the entire city as a ‘No-HTV’ zone from 8 am to 8 pm on all days except Sunday. The second thing is the number of tractors we have in the city. An agricultural vehicle, meant to be used in the fields, has no place on the city roads. They are being used to transport water, people along with whatever they can carry. On the infrastructure side, one step which will prevent a lot of ‘wrong side driving’ is installing a Slanting Spike Strip (a metal strip of slanting spikes used to impede movement of wheeled vehicles by puncturing their tyres if they are driving in a direction opposite to the slant of the spikes). A lot of times people take the wrong side just to save a few minutes of their commute by going for the nearest cut in the median even if it means driving for a few meters in the reverse direction of oncoming traffic.
The last suggestion is for all the corporates to promote cycling as a means of commute. A 5-km ride to the office will not only improve one’s health of but go a long way in reducing the pollution and chaos on the roads. Incentives to employees using cycles should set a healthy trend for other cities to follow.
Siddhartha, VIA E-MAIL