Kids raise a stink about garbage

Kids raise a stink about garbage
DH News Service, Bangalore:
Some startling revelations on the perceptions of Bangalore school students about the City have come to the fore in a unique survey carried out by the Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA), a forum for school children.


A majority of government school students would prefer to leave the City and go elsewhere if given a choice while a high percentage of respondents opined that Bangalore was not a safe place for children.

They abhor traffic jams, garbage, bad roads and pollution here. Nearly 4,400 children, aged between 13 and 15 years, from private and government schools drawn from different parts of the City were the respondents in the survey titled, “Me and My City report”. CMCA is a joint initiative of Public Affairs Centre and Swabhimana.

Its national coordinator, Vrunda Bhaskar said the unique survey “by the children, of the children” was to “articulate children’s perceptions and experiences of living in Bangalore and to stimulate our government and civil society to seriously look into the concept of a child-friendly city.” Thirty questions were put up in the survey held during October and November. Around 3,149 private school students and 1,246 students from government as well as municipal schools took part in the survey.

To a query if they would like to move to other cities if given a chance to do so, 70 per cent of government school students said “yes” and said they wished to leave to Mysore, Mandya or the US. In contrast, just 33 per cent of private school children opted to migrate to Mysore, Mangalore, Mumbai or Delhi over Bangalore.

Surprisingly, this is despite their feeling of pride for the City. To a query on “Are you proud to be a Bangalorean”, 63 per cent of children from government schools and 53 per cent from private schools answered “always proud”.
The option, “sometimes proud” was spelt out by 11 per cent from government schools and 40 per cent from private schools while the rest fell under other categories.

Bomb blasts, terrorism, high traffic and bad behaviour of people were the reasons spelt out by children to explain why they felt unsafe here.

The findings state thus: 42 per cent of children from government schools and 24 per cent from private schools said “they never felt safe”; 44 per cent government school students and 58 percent of their private school classmates said they “sometimes felt safe” while 17 per cent of all children surveyed said they “always felt safe” while going out alone.