BANGALORE: Although garbage management is not a new problem afflicting a city like Bangalore bursting at its seams, the land pollution seems to have worsened over the years. A mini tour over the Basavanagudi area, one of the busiest in town, reveals heaps of polythene bags, vegetable peels, glass and plastic pieces and unused concrete blocks. The construction of the elevated Metro rail line along KR Road (near Bangalore Medical College) up to Vani Vilas Circle, has caused destruction of a still existing park that was earlier used by residents for walking and leisure.
The fence on one side of the park is completely removed and it serves as a dump yard for the waste materials of the Metro construction. This is not the only part that suffers from waste dumping; the part of North road, right till Lalbagh West Gate, witnesses piles of garbage along the Metro barricade. The buses going to Lalbagh West Gate, from Ramakrishna Ashram have now been deviated to Vasavi Temple Road, causing lot of inconvenience to people boarding buses at this stop. This has been done to facilitate road digging in order to lay wires for digital cable connection.
In response to this situation, Neha D Harith and Vaishnavi Venkatesh, students from Jain University, VV Puram said, “It was problematic for us to come to college, but now we’ve gotten used to it”. While traffic is almost always conjested at the Vani Vilas Road Junction, because of this deviation, it is much lesser near KR Road. However, a traffic policeman from the area said that the Metro Rail did not cause any unusual traffic bursts. Geetha Jain, a resident from the road parallel to KR Road, said “The only problem we have is that the road is cleared of garbage very rarely, it attracts numerous flies and mosquitoes into the house.” She added that the trees have been cut down.
Anil Kumar S, BBMP member, washed his hands from the responsibility by stating, “The park has been handed over to the BMRCL (Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation); we cannot do anything about it. Once they finish their work, the park will be restored to its original glory.”
The Metro Station, part of the North-South Corridor, is expected to be completed by November, 2012. Hence, while on the one hand, Metro Rail is striving hard towards completion, garbage and traffic jams are some of the never-ending problems of this city.