BENGALURU: Stating that children have better ideas then bureaucrats, Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar on Tuesday oversaw a debate competition wherein students from various schools engaged in a verbal battle on transforming the city under the state government’s Brand Bengaluru initiative.
After receiving over 70,000 suggestions for the Brand Bengaluru campaign from public and experts, Shivakumar, who is also Bengaluru Development Minister, also took suggestions from the schoolchildren for his pet project.
The students spoke on the importance of using Metro, its impact on the environment and vehicular traffic and how the garden city became garbage city due to poor solid waste management and peoples’ attitude.
Shivakumar said it is not former chief minister SM Krishna, Basavaraj Bommai or present CM Siddaramaiah who built Bengaluru.
“The city thrived due to you people (schoolchildren) and the quality of education you are getting as a result of development. In future, you all should be part of a prosperous Bengaluru. Students can give better suggestions than IAS officers and hence, we are also reaching out to you in transforming Bengaluru,” he said.
Hearing a student talking about green Bengaluru, he said after he became minister, he participated in a Environment Day programme where he suggested that the municipality should make agreements with school managements and give them the responsibility of planting saplings and maintaining them. The authorities were instructed that to allow children who maintains saplings to name them. This exercise is to ensure that children display ownership towards the garden city.
The minister added Bengaluru is not a pre-designated city. “Renovating it is a challenging task. For this, the government has signed an agreement with an international agency for Bengaluru,” he added.
BBMP SPL COM IS ‘BRAND BENGALURU’ NODAL OFFICER
Bengaluru: The state government has appointed Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Special Commissioner Jayaram Raipura as nodal officer for its Brand Bengaluru initiative that aims to give an image makeover to the state capital. Also, Bengaluru-based Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology will be the academic partner of the government to realise the goal of ‘Vibrant Bengaluru’. The government also appointed a committee involving experts from various fields to give their inputs.