PMC Stinks (And So Does the City)

by Sudesh Prasad

February 4, 2006

I am from Bihar. I happened to visit Patna from Jan 29 to Feb 1, 2006 after a gap of two years with great expectations that things would have improved for better after Nitish's swearing in.

Notwithstanding all the claims by the urban development minister, I found Patna, except Bailey Road, littered with garbage. I had to take my wife to a doctor in Khazanchi road and we started thinking that we should reach the doctor in half an hour.

I started from Boring Canal Road and headed towards Ashok Rajpath via Gandhi Maidan. The entire stretch along the Ganges river (which government wants to make a drive way on the lines of Marine Drive in Mumbai) was littered with garbage and stink was beyond tolerable limits. Added to this was the cow-dung cakes plastered all along the boundary walls of the river.

As I headed towards Ashok Rajpath, the situation got worse. The traffic was chock-o-block with cycle rickshaws, autos and other vehicles vying for space. There was no order, no traffic sense. It took us 30 minutes to reach Khazanchi road from PMCH. Just outside the PMCH lay a huge heap of garbage besides sewage spilling on to the road.

I don't know what the Patna Municipal Corporation does (I could notice a new coat of paint on its building near the station). That is not all. All along the Boring Canal Road, at every corner, you can notice heap of garbage lying on the road, with no garbage bins. The greenbelt in the middle of the road is the only saving grace.

As I came out of the station, I could notice my friends from my own state lined up along the Patna Jail openly urinating on the wall. I could not notice any Sulabh Shauchalay. It is an irony that Sulabh movement is headed by a Bihari. The least Mr Vindeshwar Pathak should have done is to make Patna a model for its Sulabh Shauchalay movement.

I have some suggestions for the Chief Minister, Urban Development Minister, and Head of Patna Municipal Corporation.

1. Ensure that garbage bins are kept at proper locations and it is emptied on a regular basis.

2. There has to be an awareness campaign asking the residents to put the garbage in a wrapper before dumping on the bins.

3. Privatise the garbage collection. Chennai has done similar thing successfully.

4. Control the haphazard growth of cycle rickshaws and autos.

5. Restrict the entry of rickshaws near about 1 km from Patna Railway Station.

6. Widen the roads and make way for dedicated footpath for pedestrians.

7. Ensure that roads are washed regularly before the sunrise, ideally before 8 am and the dust that is collected should be lifted out of the road.

8. Impose strict fine for littering. Make the thela-walas, those selling fruits vegetables accountable for the garbage that they generate.

9. Gutkha, beetle chewers should not indulge in spitting all over the place (this is true of all the places in India).

10. Finally ban the polythene and promote the use of jute bags, paper bags, cloth bags as we used to use in the good old days.

There are many more suggestions for making a better Patna in particular and our own state of Bihar in general.
 

Return to previous Page