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Passing the buck and muck

Last Updated 23 July 2014, 14:24 IST

The stench of rotting fruits and vegetables hung strongly in the air but the passers-by hardly took notice of it. Heaps of squished and mouldy pomegranates, coconuts and mangoes lay on the side of the road, waiting to be dumped into the trash. The only ones who dared to venture near this pile were the neighbourhood dogs, who were plenty in number and feasted throughout the week.

 

Every week, people from the surrounding areas come to Santhe Bazaar Road in HBR Layout for the Sunday market. Vendors spend the whole day on the tiny but long by-lane selling their goods. But once the day is over, they dump what remains of their produce by the side of the road and head home. 

Marie, a resident who lives on that road, says that the road gets dirtied with not only vegetables and fruits but meat as well. According to her, Sundays are unbearable.

HBR Layout is an upcoming area and while it should be getting support from the BDA, it lacks the very basic necessity like regular garbage collection. Ramu (name changed), a vendor in the area, says that the garbage is collected once a week, on Monday, from the Sunday market area. The same road has newly-built apartments on one side and a slum settlement on another. Each side blames the other for the garbage that doesn’t come from the Sunday market.

Kanchamma, who shifted to Bangalore from Gulbarga, says, “We hardly have any garbage. Anything we have is either burnt or swept away. It’s the people in the apartments who dump their trash here and blame it on us.” Neelisa, who stays in one of the apartments, says that it’s intolerable to live amidst such garbage but people should take better care of their surroundings. The uncollected garbage attracts scores of dogs who are known to get violent. Children from the slums are exposed to these animals and provoke them further by throwing stones. “If anyone new goes near the garbage they bark a lot but they are actually harmless,” insists Kanchamma. Shobha Dayalu, who lives on the perpendicular road, says that her maid got bitten by one of these dogs.

“People feed them meat and go away, while leaving the plastic cover in which they got the meat in on the road. When fed meat, they become more aggressive and attack people in front of our houses. When I asked these people to stop, they brought a court order saying that it was their right to feed the dog. In that case, they should take it to their house and keep the dog and look after it.” While the residents are uncomfortable with their situation, no one is ready to do anything about it. When asked if they have complained to the authorities, they say there is no point in it. There are a handful of citizens, however, who are willing to stand up for their rights.“We have to fight for everything,” says Shobha, who never backs down from a fight.

According to her, the Sunday market is a big problem in many ways. “Before, the market used to be on the main road but since it was obstructing traffic, we had it moved to the by-lane. Now, there is no one to clean it before or after and it is unhygienic. Men urinate everywhere. 

Even the women come to the side of road, near our houses, and relieve themselves. When I ask them to stop, they ask me to empathise as another woman. What can I say to that?” she says.

Madhumathi Varadarajan, who lives a few houses away from Shobha, faces the same problems. 

She says she never buys anything from any of the vendors there because she suspects some of it might be grown using the water from the nearby sewage. “I have to pay Rs 1,000 every month to the BBMP contractors to collect my garbage. The bigger apartments pay because it doesn’t work out too expensive for them and they want their garbage gone. But for us, that amount is too much. However, we have no choice but to pay.”

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(Published 23 July 2014, 13:25 IST)

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