When words do the trick to deter waste offenders

 While officials of Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) are at their wit’s end to end the menace of illegal dumping of garbage in City, the residents of Jnanabharathi ward in Rajarajeshwari Nagar constituency, have, however, found a novel way to nip such unheeding adventurers at bud.

What better than drive home the message in the only lingo they would sit up and listen.
A few residents and shop owners in the ward have put up display boards with ugly and abusive warnings at junctions prone to illegal garbage dumping.

For example, a park corner next to Outer Ring Road and opposite Ambedkar Engineering College, a regular garbage and construction debris dumping haven, has this board in Kannada — “Illi kasa haakidare, chappali pooje maduttheve” (meaning if you dump garbage here, you will be slippered). 

Sure enough, the idea has worked. “Earlier, BBMP had displayed a note saying those dumping garbage will be fined with Rs 100, failing to deter them. The new board, though, ensured dumping come down dramatically,” said a shopkeeper Vishwanatha K.

Resident Pavana Mitra said similar boards have been installed at strategic points of the ward. “They have statements such as those dumping garbage will be beaten up, such people have no shame, etc,” he added. The succinct intentions seem to have had a desired result.

Psychiatrist Partha Sarathy K explained that it only showed how desperate citizens were to get rid of the garbage menace.

A senior BBMP official from the ward office, though, had the last word when he said, ironically it is the residents of the same ward who are dumping the garbage in road corners. “We will hold talks with them to address the problem,” he said.