What is it going to take to have a Clean Bombay?

i talked to some folks living in western suburbs who live in so called ``societies``..these are aprtment co-ops or condo associations and they told me some interesting stuff. many of them have their own composting with some kinda worms thereby reducing houshold garbage for collection by the municipality. they use the compost to fertilize their flower beds.

household trash collection in bombay is pretty good in most localities..its outsourced. it works thus..the 4-grade employee with seniority gets about 15000 pm in salary from the municipality, and he in turn apppoints bhaiyya/immigrant for about 2000 rs so that he can be free to do other things.

the juhu and girgaum chowpatty beaches are also kept clean by the BMC sarkar as well as the vendors there. the problem is the ocean water is very polluted by debri and raw sewage.

so bottomline is while bmc being very corrupt n all, it does not controll infrastructure funding (its with the state govt). it has done a good job of provideng water, bus service and trash collection. the ghati and central politicians have screwed bombay big time by not allocating any infrastructure (e.g. railways, sewage) funding commensurate with its size. dilli and hydrabad and culcutta infact did get such funding.

this lack of funding was indeed ackowledges in MM singh

``Perhaps decongestion is the only way one can bring about some form of cleanliness, moving people away from the city and expanding , Vashi, Nerul... etc and constructing better links to the mainland. Otherwise the statistics are mindboggling. 20 million people can generate a lot of garbage. ``

Good Point.

#39
It`s probably true that Bombay is the filthiest city in India now and everybody else is quite happy with that. But then you have to look at things a little more closely. It is the most populous city in India and the smallest in area. At 437.77 km2 it hosts 20 million people. Delhi the next largest in terms of population is 1,483 km2. Calcutta is not even there in terms of population (4.5 million) and is 785 sq km.

If you crowd people together in such a small place you are going to have issues with cleanliness. Blocking immigration doesn`t help much. I think official immigration to Bombay has fallen but all the folks already there are producing kids and they aren`t going anywhere because most of them cannot.

As a kid I travelled to Churchgate often enough on weekdays and after 10 am I could get a seat on a local train from Ville-Parle in the second class(Rs 1.20p return fare). Fat chance of that happening now.

Perhaps decongestion is the only way one can bring about some form of cleanliness, moving people away from the city and expanding , Vashi, Nerul... etc and constructing better links to the mainland. Otherwise the statistics are mindboggling. 20 million people can generate a lot of garbage.

nb, people in Bombay do think they have a good deal. They wouldn`t be coming there otherwise. However few people think that it shouldn`t improve. So don`t make ridiculous remarks. A point, Bombay pays 38% of the countries taxes, processes twice as many cheques per day as Delhi, 14% of national bank deposits, 80% of the mutual funds are registered there, 90% of merchant banking transactions , 92 % of stock market turnover (got this from the Guardian). Bombay contributes something like Rs.382 billion in corporate tax alone from a recent peer review and gets a paltry Rs.977 million rupees for infrastructure development.

Only six idiots get elected from Bombay to the Lok Sabha. That`s going to make a hell of a difference. I hate to be parochial, but we don`t have a pot to piss in because it goes to Delhi and seemingly other places that can build modern metros etc.

It is our fault too in some ways. We`ve destroyed the city, taking part in sectarian politics etc.

Re: # 40
No one thinks it shouldn`t improve. Show me where I said that, or explain yourself. A lot of people think it`s so good, it can`t improve.
It gives me no pleasure that Bombay is so dirty, but I am tired of excuses. This population hasn`t suddenly landed in the last hour, there has been enough time and there is enough money to plan for it.There is a lack of civic and political will. If people are happy to live in muck, why should politicians care?

Re: # 49
nb

[This is exactly why Bombay never improves-people there still think they have the best deal in the country and therefore they don`t need to improve]

This is your statement.

[No one thinks it shouldn`t improve] is mine. Do you have problems with reading or comprehension?

So you think there is a lack of civic and political will. I agree. Nobody is questioning that. I don`t know which Bombay you lived in but most Bombayites that I know do agree its dirty.

But you don`t seem to read other bits that I posted. It isn`t that easy to do things in a small area with a large population. Migration to cities is never planned in the 3rd world. It happens. And politicians are the last people to worry about planning in India.

You can blame the city and the people who live there as part of the problem and no doubt they are but few people have the energy to go out and do something after travelling and working the better part of the day.

So lets take the issue of toilets for maids etc. Take my area of Ville-Parle. Our maids used to live in a small chawl that had a common set of toilets for the people there. Time went on. In the 70`s there was a whole bunch of rag-pickers who came to the Western Express Highway area and settled there. They didn`t have toilets. They didn`t have jobs except for rag picking. So what did you expect the citizens around there to do. Build toilets for them? Would they do anything with the toilets. Have you lived in villages in India nb? People don`t have toilets there either and they go out into the fields. The ragpickers, construction workers etc come from those villages and all the drains in Bombay are the fields for them. There isn`t anywhere else to go and after some time you lose all sense of shame. To put it crudely ``When you gotta go , you gotta go?``

I cannot comment on the middle classes of other cities but the people in Bombay do not have the time and energy to invest in this because most of them are dead beat when they come home. That is why Calcutta and Delhi do not contribute to the national exchequer the way Bombay does. Perhaps that is why the middle class in those cities have time to build toilets, clean the streets and Oh, I forgot a government that is willing to keep the capital city clean and perhaps a government that made Calcutta the economic powerhouse it is today so that it could pay for its metro.

But the poor middle class in Bombay depend on the people they elect to office , who of course fail them. Even there the middle classes are out voted because there isn`t even enough of them. The poor are far more and they will vote for anybody who pays them money, not for those who will build them toilets.

These are not excuses these are facts. Incidentally where are you going to construct toilets for all the slum dwellers in Bombay? I`m afraid the middle class does not have money to buy the few pieces of land left. Been bought up by the politicians and criminals y`know.

I`m not saying people are not apathetic but Bombay has a large migrant population that couldn`t care less about the city and most of them are poor and some don`t care a great deal about cleanliness.

Did you clean the toilets in the public hospital where you were a doctor? Before or after use? If you did I admire and respect you. If you didn`t then you were part of the problem like the rest of us you talked about, because it wasn`t your job.

Re: # 68

Excellent Post.

#36 by ajay78

I`d be pleasantly suprised if most of the city is really clean now.

Ajay Yaar, Hyderabad is one of the cleanest cities in India now. The previous government privatized the cleaning and garbage collection throughout the city and now, Hdyerabad looks fantastic. Also, a lot of gardens and parks that were left to waste have been renovated and maintained by the Municipal Corporation. Visit the city and you`ll know.

Devkant

In terms of cleanliness, are you just talking about Esplanade, Park Street, Chowringee and posh residential localities like Bally Gunge? I have a tough time believing that places like Howrah, Dum Dum, Kali Ghat and localities close to the city centre are clean..

I`d be pleasantly suprised if most of the city is really clean now.

Re: # 36
Um, yes. You need to check it out. I find it interesting that you have not been there in years, yet feel qualified to criticise it. This is exactly why Bombay never improves-people there still think they have the best deal in the country and therefore they don`t need to improve. I have visited Calcutta every year for years, and have lived in Bombay, and have seen more of the filth there than most people, because I actually worked briefly at Dharavi Hospital and used to walk there from the Mahim railway station. I lived for some time on Napean Sea Road, and what was incredible was that you had all these billionaires and film stars walking around in Breach Candy but you still had to watch where you stepped.

``#34 by ajay78 on March 7, 2007 10:50pm PT
Re: # 17

That`s right.. Kolkata is the cleanest metro city in India and its residents have very little tolerance for filth! Give me a break.. ``

Ajay, you may actually be surprised to see how clean calcutta has become. i was shocked beyond words to see calcutta when i last visited there after a gap of more than 10 years. that place has cleaned up beyond everyone`s imagination. no one every thought that cal could be cleaned up, but the people there did it.

the have also implemented very strict noise pollution levels. hence diwali in cal is much more tolerable than in other cities like bombay.

rgds,

devkant.

cobra #25

{{Stop rampant immigration of poor and destitute from other parts to come to Mumbai and over burden the limited resources.}}

How do you plan to do this?

Authoritarian Stalinist countries like PRC have a system of residence permits (hukou in China). Former USSR used to have a system of internal passports. Internal migration cannot be disallowed without such a system - which is a non-starter in a democracy, and the will to to enforce it – not evident in India. The Indian setup cannot or will not even prevent illegal Bangladeshi immigrants from migrating to all parts of India and getting ration cards …

Are there market-based mechanisms that could work in the short term and also pass tests of equity? The sure long-term route – if you can figure out a way to do it - is to make life more livable in the places where the migrants come from.

Re: # 31

Russia still issues internal passports to its citizens. The internal passport is the most important id in the country. It shows in which region the holder is registered. There`s a rule that a Russian citizen (or foreigner) can`t stay in Moscow for more than three days without official registration. Though the rule is unconstitutional, the city authorities insist on it to keep outsiders out. Of course, there are millions of ``illegal`` Russians in the city on fake registrations!

It is impossible to implement such a system in Bombay. Like someone mentioned, many Bangladeshis have ration cards and voter`s ids. We can`t even LEGALLY keep those people out.

Here is a good example of organic, home grown hygienic activity. Instead of using toxic shampoos and conditioners, the lady uses India`s plentiful bounty for healthy hygienic hair.

Re: # 30

that`s as mainstream as jinnah being a (pork eater) muslim!

norm is diff from exception.

Chutif2 has a point..it has to do with individual responsibility and economic status. A guy would walk around the street spitting his paan on the walls of an apartment building but will search out the spitoon or toilet in a 5 star hotel..why? peolpe act accroding to their surroundings. It was the same here in the US, to some degree it still exists. walk around Burnside ave in the bronx or Maryville, tenn...the smell of Urine is overwhelming, garabage littered all over the place. i

payee cobra its like this. apropriations are done for states. bmc does an ok job of sweeping the streets but is unable to embark on infrastructure projects like shit-processing plants for all the new bhaiyyas without proper infra funds. now MMsingh promised some targeted earmarks for shanghaiaification but that is only recent and anyhoo out of grabs for bmc. similarly, the suburban railway sys should be made an autonomous corp out of lallus hands. bombay cannot even widen a simple pedestrian bridge without approval from dilli.

its all for the good of the bhaiyya