Yes. With exceptions. There are few who really have deep in their hearts believe that they can turn Bangalore around to make it a model city. Prof. Rajeev Gowda is one of them. A professor at IIMB has got many ideas. His fights both internal and external has led him to become the spokesperson to a political party in Karnataka. He wants every Bangalorean to come together on this effort.
When I met him on the quest of my own in education and skill development, he was busy with plans to cleaning up a garbage dump that has closed almost half of the road. Is this an isolated situation that took him there to take some action? I don’t think so. I have plenty of such garbage dumps around the city.
In my previous blog on this, I had given the reasons for the fall. Here, I am proposing few things that can make things better for everyone. It is possible not only through committed individuals like Prof. Rajeev Gowda, but also through many such individual and isolated efforts that I have seen around Bangalore.
I recently went around the businesses surrounding the park nearby my house. Every one wants to see a cleaner Bangalore, by the questions remains – why is it not happening?
There has to be paradigm shift in viewing the public places as not a public place to do anything everything, but as a public place where a common decency exists towards each other. There are two such violations worth mentioning.
The housemaid at my place came with some postal junk that I told her as not important as they are some kind of promotions to buy something and if she wants, she can still make use of it. After asking what it is, the next thing she does amazed me and annoyed me. With a blink of an eye, she threw it outside my house. When I asked her why she did what she did, she said why I should worry about it since it is not in front my gate, but is to the side. Looks like that if you see it clean in front of your house, why care about other areas that you cannot see? Shouldn’t I worry about those who look at my house from the street or look at my street where I live? Shouldn’t you?
The second violation was even more bizarre. Walking past a house that maintained the house very clean not only in front of their house, but also few blocks left and right of their house got my attention. I asked the owner how he was able to keep it in such a condition. He said it was hard as even the neighbors who walk their dogs had let dog poo there without the concern for the area well-kept. When he asked them to either clear the poo or take the dog somewhere else, they retorted saying why he should bother about the public place. What a load of s..t! Just because they want to keep their house front clean from dog’s poo, it does not matter to them about others even after seeing how well-kept the place was!
There has to be a paradigm shift from such viewpoints of a public place. Then only things can improve for Bangalore.