Patna polls down in the dumps

Seventy-year-old Shanti Mishra, a freedom fighter and a former MLA from Munger, is a candidate from Ward No 2 and her rubble-rousing cry is garbage disposal.

‘‘Elect me and I will get rid of the filth,’’ she tells her voters. Her plans are ambitious to the point of being far-fetched but she strikes a cord with the people of her locality. ‘‘I tell people I will clean the mohalla. I will create landfills of two feet in my area and dump garbage,’’ she says.

Huge stockpiles of garbage and filth line many streets of Patna for weeks. The PMC trucks come once a week and in some places even once a month. Last year, during Durga Puja the corporation cleaners went on a strike for two months and the Patna High Court had to intervene to clear the rotting garbage. PMC karamcharis themselves admit that in a year they are on strike for six months. And in other instances also garbage has been lifted only after the court intervened.

According to a 2001 report of the Environmental Sciences Department of A.N. College, Patna generates garbage from 750 to 800 tonnes per day and 218 gm per person. The result: Patna has been turning to private operators. The latest initiative was started by a group of 19 NGOs aided by Unicef. The group has employed ragpickers and cleaners who take the garbage from the kitchen to the PMC dumpsters. The effort is funded mainly by the public.

‘‘This is to just supplement the PMC but people expect us to do everything. It’s also a matter of tackling people’s attitude,’’ says Arvind Singh, coordinator of the project. Guddu Baba, another man fighting the garbage war for years, says: ‘‘You have one tractor for five wards. So the PMC reaches a place only after a month,’’ he says.

According to the Safai Karamchari Union, half the equipment is in bad shape. The PMC has not got enough staff in the last 18 years while the population of Patna has almost doubled.