Garbage, City & Adar Poonawalla!

 

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“The scale of the mess (read as garbage) we leave behind is proportionate to the level of respect we have for others.” … Stewart Stafford

Stewart is a gifted writer & author of books like “The Vorbing” & the interesting thing about the good authors is not their command of the words but the way they can connect their feelings with the words, which is why I found Stewart’s above words perfect when the subject of my sharing is garbage! Of late our beloved city (actually entire world) is worried about many fronts such as communal hatred, terrorism, drugs, drinking water, pollution, deforestation, traffic, population growth & pandemic, but in all these aspects one major front which is directly related to every aspect of life we are forgetting. And it's silently growing within our society just the way cancer cells grow inside an apparently healthy-looking body on the surface but when the stage three is crossed the killer disease surfaces suddenly from nowhere & by then all is gone! Same way, while we are fighting with infra fronts which can be seen on the surface & which are outcome of our development which most of us call as growth also but under the cover of this growth there is a silent killer which is very much active & alive in the so-called healthy body of our Smart City & that is none other than the Garbage of which we only are the creator just the way our body only create cancer cells which eventually ends our own life!

If you think I am exaggerating things, then please open your eyes (even if you don’t open them yet you can smell) & look around you while you move in & around this city & tell me what you see! Right from when you step out of your home (read as flat), in the lobbies of the staircase you will find garbage bins with cartons telling you what has been ordered in which flat last night. You step down to the ground floor & at the entry gate you will find bigger dust bins awaiting to be collected by none other than a PMC garbage collection truck & this contains everything from leftover food to interior works thrash to damaged mobile chargers!  Then you look at the wet garbage treatment vermicomposting pits in your complex which are mandatory by PMC by laws & you find they are full with dry leaves of trees in your society & any such thing but wet garbage & are not in operation since the possession of the building! Then you come on the road & see the so-called public garbage bin also overflowing & one need not have to look at the board of “Public Garbage Bin Here” as entire surrounding of that place is covered with every possible piece of garbage & pigs as well stray dogs doing the rest of damage to spread this garbage. If this is not enough then as you start walking you can see (and smell too) thrash laying all along the footpaths & that also contains left over food parcels to empty beer bottles to sanitary napkins (used) & on top of it building material waste. If you go further down out of centre city & bypass then you can actually see small hills of such garbage all along both sides of the road as more the space available for dumping (read as public space) more is the volume of garbage dumped, is the simple formula of garbage accumulation & no village, town or city is exception to this Law of Garbage! And if you don’t see any garbage around you at any of the places I have mentioned, then check your eyesight (nose too) or you are definitely not in Pune or any village or town or city in our State, maybe you are abroad! All those die hard “Maharashtra Lovers”, I am sorry if you got offended with my statement but use your love, affection (& anger for my words) to keep the surrounding garbage free than wasting your time in cursing me, that will help more to our beloved State. I deliberately used the term “Garbage Free” rather than “Clean Surrounding” as our definition of cleaning is, pushing our garbage (read as throwing or dumping) in neighbourhood spaces from where we won’t see or smell our own generated garbage!

Just the way many soft drink companies advertise their drink as Zero Sugar or Zero Calories & we feel happy living a healthy life even while we consume those soft drinks, the same principle we apply to our definition of Cleanliness by throwing away our garbage out of our eye sight! This is why I call the garbage issue as dangerous as cancer. Slowly, somewhere all this accumulated garbage keeps poisoning our environment in every possible form, may it be polluting water sources or degrading soil quality or polluting air with foul gases & we think we are living healthy life with no garbage around to be seen. As well the hips or garbage are actually home of bacteria & viruses via mosquitos & many such insects & on top of it we have the most innovative way of destroying the garbage & that is to burn it, which actually destroys us, the humans more than that garbage! But then why am I wasting my words for the damage the garbage can & is doing to our lives as we know this already, don’t we? Well, why I am wasting my words is sometimes the bitter medicine dosage is needed to give repeatedly as then only its effective the same way I just mentioned our attitude towards this garbage cancer!

Now coming to our standard question when the problem is about providing infrastructure or dealing with public issues like garbage & that is, “what the xxxx the govt is doing about this garbage, don’t we pay our taxes, why we should be dealing with garbage then?”!  Yes, govt is indeed responsible for dealing with the garbage problem & you do pay taxes, thank you for that but the real question is, “who the xxxx creates this garbage & throws it around?” And the answer to this question is, every one of us creates some or other type of garbage but we abandon this garbage just the way some illegal child gets abandoned by its parents (lawaris)! I am sorry guys, for the harsh analogy but that’s the fact about our created garbage as we generate every kind of garbage in every hour of the day but we never take ownership of that garbage, right?  And nobody is taking ownership of the garbage, which is the biggest reason which makes this garbage problem as most dangerous in the ranking of civic or say urbanization infrastructure problems because then everybody just points finger at someone else for taking care of the garbage & it just keeps increasing & damaging us only! And this is why we can’t just blame the govt for not taking care of garbage as govt indeed is responsible but the majority of responsibility for the garbage problem lies on every individual. How can we expect the govt to clean up the mess we have created as we throw our home’s, work place’s garbage in public places at our will without treating or ever segregating it & then we blame govt for the same. We don’t even take efforts to carry the garbage to public garbage bins but prefer to just throw it or dump it along the footpath outside our buildings & we shout in the name of govt that it doesn’t keep the city clean. We worship our god in our homes as well in temples & we throw the earlier days flowers & offerings (prasad) in the river & we name govt for not doing anything regarding rivers getting polluted. We let our industrial/ construction waste dump in the grasslands or hills around & we think the govt will make these lands green & the list of our wrong doings is endless but we point finger to the govt for all such wrongdoings of ours, true hypocrites we are!

Now if you are in tune with what I shared till now about garbage then let’s see what is need of time & need of the time for garbage is everybody should become Adar Poonawalla! If you think I have gone mad, as whenever a cleanliness drive is mentioned people (read as our leaders) take names of Mahatma Gandhi or Gadgebaba (a true social worker) & yes, these names are important but they are past & we just use them for publicity instead following their actions. Now you will ask why Adar Poonawalla, well look around in the city as if you see garbage all around then you will see some garbage collecting vacuum cleaners as well some trucks & men with uniform & all these will have Adar Poonawalla Foundation logo on them, this is why we all need to copy him. Poonawalla are billionaire & apart from making Vaccines they care for their city & has contributed in Crores of rupees to the civic body for taking care of garbage & indeed we may not able to donate in the form of money but we can individually help civic body on two fronts, first is trying to reduce generation of garbage & second is helping in treating (recycle) the self-generated garbage! So, we have to follow the attitude of Adar Poonawalla on the front of the garbage, taking responsibility for the garbage, is what is need of the time!

At local bodies as well as societies, we need to undertake a drive for awareness among every citizen, what & how he or she can contribute against the fight with garbage. On this front I must mention the recent Clean Societies’ Namo Cup (don’t go by name) event where in my locality a political party has arranged a competition for the buildings to make their building clean. Let’s keep the political aspect aside but this is very important initiative, as alone no govt or dept can make & maintain even a ward clean leave apart the city! And just by making laws against throwing garbage, nothing will change, is what we have witnessed though that doesn’t mean remove these laws but awareness & law enforcement should go in hand. At the same time stop collecting wet garbage from the societies’ which have got sanctions with conditions of vermicomposting. Where such a system was not made, make them do it now & make provision of funds in the budget of local, State as well Central budgets for vermicomposting or wet garbage treatment plants & time specified or else fine them with double property tax! At the same time there has to be squads to patrol around to keep an eye on throwing garbage in open or public areas & such people should be punished so heavily that no one should again dare to do so (I am day dreaming, I know). Most important is, continuous awareness programs about garbage problems in schools & colleges, as this is a very effective medium in the long run. On a personal level we must try to apply our mind to reduce the garbage generation & for that first always carrying a cloth carry bag is an easiest & effective way as packaging or using carry bags for every item we buy is the biggest garbage generator. And ordering food which we can consume is another aspect or at least repack it in a good way & give to needy ones. Here the local civic body can think of making leftover food collecting systems & redistributing it to the poor, just a thought & we need many such thoughts!

Do mind, water, traffic, homes, jobs, education, public health these all things we can generate or create but the garbage problem is altogether different because it’s not about generating but about dealing with what we have generated. We are “One Earth” & its round, so whatever we push away, one day will again land in our own backyard (in multiplied volume) & garbage is no exception to this law of physics, adios with this note!

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Sanjay Deshpande 

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at You Tube link below..

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4xX7eopH5o&t=5s

 

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https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2021/09/choosing-right-home.html

http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/2021/09/blog-post_21.html

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