Dwindling Mango Showers

Another scorching summer is upon us with hardly any 'mango rains' in sight. There was a wet spell in the beginning of April, but looks like it was more of a one off case than a pattern this city was once famous for. It used to get showers whenever the mercury breached the 32-33 degree Celsius mark.

The city used to bask in soothing sobriquets such as 'air-conditioned city' with tales regarding its salubrious clime spread far and wide. A couple of years back a friend from Kolkata had visited here and was quite amazed by the weather and told me "Now I know why many people who come here for work or studies settle down for good.”

Old timers who had worked at the numerous cantonments dotting the city recall that in the seventies Bangalore was considered as 'no fan' station by the army as the weather used to be too pleasant to warrant ceiling fans. For the armymen stationed here it used to be winter uniform all year long. Now AC ducts seem to have bored its way into offices and even homes.

In fact in 1990s when American technology majors came scouting for  centres for outsourcing in India, the Bangalore weather acted as a lodestone in making many of them set shop here.

Seven years back when I came to this city from Chennai (which as per a very common PJ has basically three seasons - hot, hotter and hottest) the pleasant weather at Bangalore used to make me feel languid and drowsy all the time.

Few days after coming here I was having breakfast at the now defunct Brindavan Hotel on MG Road and I overheard a native (probably a guide) explain to a backpacker foreigner couple how the city is blessed with pleasant weather and it rains whenever the temperatures cross a limit. The couple was also happily nodding in agreement. Another friend of mine, who too had stayed in Chennai, had warned me that clothes take longer time to dry up in Bangalore.

All that now seems to be from a different era. Nowadays while hitting the roads during afternoons one even gets to see mirages, something associated with more hotter and arid climes. To ward off hot sun, I see women on two-wheelers wear headscarves in a manner that would make Taliban proud. A visit to a beach resort is no longer necessary to acquire a sun tan, few hours out in the sun during afternoons is enough.

Weathermen say it is the price we are paying for rapid urbanization and the heavy toll on tree cover. This is more so on the outskirts like Whitefield, Hebbal, Sarjapur or Electronics City, where the skyline almost resembles Vashi or Gurgaon with high rise apartments, offices and spanking malls. Luckily the city centre has some huge green spaces like Cubbon Park and many cantonment  areas where the greenery is more or less intact.

With the concrete structures replacing large swathes of greenery at an alarming rate, the days of mercury hitting the 40 degrees Celsius may be round the corner.

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Well Oiled Hafta Machinery

We had a rough idea about it all along, but never bothered to fathom the problem. So when The Hindu came up with an in-depth report about the bribes taken by Bangalore's policemen from hawkers, traders, prostitutes, eunuchs and even pavement dwellers, a far more dirty picture emerged.

The hafta collected by beat policemen in the city undergoes a 'suction up' effect (my lame attempt to find an opposite of 'trickle down') and a certain percentage of this booty is passed on to higher officials. Officers above the rank of sub-inspector do not indulge in such menial tasks as hafta collection and hence a portion of the money collected by their subordinates lands on their table.

This system of 'mamool' or 'parallel taxation' is jocularly termed as VAT ka VAT by the traders and the report says that only beggars and handicapped vendors are exempt. Though I find it hard to believe that they indeed spare the beggars. Maybe they approach beggar mafia leaders for the purpose.

The hafta rates are 'floating' and buoys up during festivals. And needless to say India is indeed a land of festivals. So it is as good as it gets for them. A sex worker claims she has to pay 'double' hafta on festival days.

Though in most cases it is the police constable on 'cheetah' bike (a Bajaj Pulsar with cheetah like markings) who goes around collecting money, sometimes they come in 'hoysala' vans and the collection rates go up. It gets even higher when a sub-inspector turns up.

There are also instances of this function being 'outsourced'. The report states that in the busy KR Market there are 2,000 vendors and it would be too much of an effort to go about collecting haftas. Hence the officer there has deployed some persons to carry out the task twice a day. The vendors claim they are not goons, but normal persons, who happen to be jobless. Now how can we say that policemen lack ingenuity and are not keeping up with the times and managerial practices.

Bar owners have to shell out on a daily as well as monthly basis. The daily rates differ among bar owners who down shutters before the curfew time of 11 pm and those who do so later. In addition, all bar owners have to pay a monthly levy at the nearest police station.

Cases of assaults are settled 'amicably' if something upwards of Rs 25,000 is paid and even the most 'peaceful' police stations receive at least two such cases a day.

Hence the gravy train of mamool collection smoothly rolls on with most men in khaki on board.

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Footpath Users' Travails

Hi, we use footpaths when we have to travel a short distance or if it helps us reach our destination in a shorter time, than take a vehicle and get caught in slow moving traffic or circuitous u-turns. However, exercising that option is not for the faint-hearted, as it often turns out to be as treacherous as treading a minefield.

Decently maintained footpaths in Bangalore have become as rare as sparrows and even on arterial roads they are in bad shape. Recently when the German Consulate in the city was planning to hold Indo–German Urban Mela, it had to plead with the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike to fix the roads and footpath near the consulate building!

The slabs on most pavements are often not properly fixed, but they look deceptively firm and you realise their true state only when you step on them. Your heart misses many beats, while left dangling.

At some places the slabs are missing and you have to use your athletic skills to dart over them. A glimpse at the view below will make your stomach churn. It’s one of those tell tale repositories of our collective abdication of civic sense.

Dodging litter is another big challenge. It ranges from household waste in polythene bags to what remains of morning ablution carried out by cattle and pooches (from strays to pure breeds residing in gated communities). Quite often one has to take a chance of stepping on the road, and risk their limbs, to make way for cows relieving on footpaths, quite unmindful of the surroundings. Even more unmindful are men who treat footpaths as open air urinals. This malaise cuts across social status, caste and economic boundaries.

Near traffic junctions and markets the hapless pedestrian gets elbowed out by cobblers, vegetable and other vendors. With barely a space to have a toehold over footpath, many get down to the road and this only adds to the congestion on the roads. At some places we have power transformers taking a Lion’s share.

And lastly, during the rush hours of morning and evening, pedestrians are often subjected to the deadliest challenge. They have to contend with footpath bikers, trying to beat the traffic pile ups near various signals. They use footpaths to dart past the bumper to bumper traffic  – and let pedestrians be damned.

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Trash At The Doorstep

Like any other Indian city Bangalore too has a primitive landfill method of disposing its waste, something it inherited probably from British Raj days. Then the city was a fraction of what it is now, both in terms of size and population. Little reforms or innovation have happened in this sector ever since.

I guess this has to do with the deep rooted caste system in the country, where jobs such as cleaning the streets, toilets and surrounding are looked down upon. Though the city transformed itself from pensioner's paradise to silicon valley, there has been hardly any change in the way the employees of this particular sector function.

The civic employees (or pourakarmikas) still use the same old broom and have to rely on bare hands to collect the waste. Moreover, it goes without saying that their pay and other service conditions are abysmal.

Until recently it was a heart wrenching sight to see some of the male civic workers, clad in loin clothes, descend into manholes to clear blocks. Thankfully after long drawn legal battles, we now see BBMP's Jetter machines carrying out the task. However since they are mounted on trucks, they do cause traffic snarls when they are at work in narrow bylanes. But this is a small price to pay to relieve the civic workers of their misery.

The mindset of city residents towards waste and its disposal is no way different from the rest of Indian public. As long as it does not prove an eyesore  or hit his nostrils, it is out of mind. This idyll, resting solely on complacency, came crashing nearly two and half months ago, when the civic workers went on strike as they had not got their salaries for three months. The problem got confounded when people staying near the landfills too rose in protest. They said their health and well being was being affected by incessant dumping of city's trash.

In the resulting standoff the city's street corners got dotted with ugly mounds of garbage, much to the delight of stray dogs, cattle and of course rats. They were not only eyesores and nausea inducing, but the city also witnessed an alarming rise in the number of dengue cases.

However, its not that the city fathers never thought of processing the waste. They made a half hearted effort by entrusting Ramky Infrastructure Ltd to set up a waste treatment plant at Mavallipura.

But things did not happen as planned. Ramky contends it was promised 100 acres land, but could get around half of it as 46 acres was under litigation. Hence they are able to process only 20% of waste and were not able to set up the proposed plant to generate power out of waste. But villagers allege that there is an unholy nexus between Ramky and BBMP officials and hardly any waste gets processed.

Another dimension to this problem is that due to the rising population and real estate pressures the buffer zone between the landfills and human habitations have thinned down. It used to be 1 kilometre, but now it is 100 metres.

Then BBMP came up with segregation at source mantra. Considering the kind of ‘civic sense’ a Bangalorean, or for that matter an Indian has, it was like expecting  juvenile home inmates to follow Sunday school teaching. Though the BBMP has rolled out the scheme, the response has been far from encouraging, barring few pockets.

Lots of questions remain. What constitutes a dry waste and wet waste is something many are still not clear about. Though BBMP has post haste brought in the segregation rule, it has done little to set up dry waste treatment plants.

The scenario in my area is that pourakarmikas have stopped taking waste from houses and it is being dumped at street corners. And newer mounds of garbage seem to be emerging and a lasting solution seems nowhere in sight.

The current rainy spell due to cyclone Nilam on Chennai coast is only making matters worse.

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