Encroachments, Real Estate
Lobby, Abuse of Nature, Apathy of elected Representative and non-responsive
Authorities have lead to the vanishing of Lakes in Bangalore. The city that
boosted of it gardens, park and lakes is now at the mercy real estate lobbies
whose greed and disrespect to nature had turned the city into a concrete
jungle.
The citizens of HSR Layout on
7th July gathered to create awareness and draw the attention of the
authorities towards Agara Lake. 15 gardeners appointed by the citizens have
been working for the last 2 days clearing weeds and floating plastic in the
lake, about 400 people from all walks of life - young & old, men &
women joined hands to clear the non-biodegradable garbage on walking tracks and
floating plastic in the lake.
Sowjanya & Jenitha spoke
about how the lake was once a prime attraction for the residents of Mantri
Sarovar few years ago, and today they are scared even to go for a walk along
with their children in the evening as anti-social elements have occupied the
lake. They also mentioned about the importance of children knowing their
environment, respecting it, be prepared to protect and save the nature.
Jay Krishanan who is one of
the organizer of the event said ‘It is a
1st step and we hope to create awareness and build momentum in the
days to come, we have received good support so far from the LDA and will work
with them to make it more and more effective and we want the BBMP to ensure the
rain water reaches the lake’. Sudhakar another resident commented that ‘Lake was a place which many avoided due to
the goons and illegal activities that take place in the lake’.
Suresh Shetty part of the
organizing team went to many apartments to invite them to participate in the
walkathon, he says ‘one good thing about
Agara Lake is that encroachments are not a possibility as the lake is
surrounded by roads, at least that ensures the lake size will not reduce any
further’.
The citizens have been
meeting the government authorities consistently and had also invited Mr Kaushik
Mukherjee Additional Chief Secretary Govt of Karnataka, Dr Ravi Ralph CEO Lake
Development Authority and Dr Yellappa Reddy Redt IFS Officer, well know
Environmentalist also to come and motive the citizens. Both Mr Mukherjee and Dr
Ralph walked with the citizens re-assuring their commitment to rejuvenate Agara
Lake.
Dr Yellappa Reddy minced no
words in stating that both the citizens and government are responsible for the
present condition of Environment. He said encroachments have become a norm and
the political representatives are hand-in glove with the real estate barons and
builders. Sounding emotional he also said ‘We
have no respect to the Nature and we have even ignored the 51A(g) of the
constitution, where it is the fundamental duty of the citizen to protect and
improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life,
and to have compassion for living creatures’. He gave the examples of how
several lakes in Karnataka were build/restored/saved by individual who
contributed their life savings. He also mentioned ‘today Bangalore is short of drinking water and if we continue to abuse
and exploit the nature we will only see the worst’. Dr Yellappa Reddy was categorical
that AT Ramaswamy report has to be taken up by the government strongly and
there should be special courts to address encroachments of lakes and other
ecological spots.
Munivenkatappa Retd ACP who
is a regular jogger at the Agara Lake and also the President of the proposed
citizen committee was quick to point out that ‘it’s important for all citizens to join hands, and no one person can
make a change all by themselves, it will take 6-8 months of consistent effort
to make the lake more visible and to bring back citizens to enjoy the nature, once
the lake has more water more birds will start visiting the lake’.
It is noticed that even with
good early monsoon the lake still has very less water; the blockages in SWD
across the locality/ies have disrupted the flow of water into the lake. Almost
all the SWD have huge amount of garbage pile up and has not been de-silted for
many years. BBMP has not taken any concrete action on the garbage dumping in
the Raj Kaluve or cleared the blockages. No amount of complains has woken up
the BBMP from the slumber, they find excuses not to act upon each time a water
logging or over flow of SWD is reported.
Mr Kaushik Mukherjee immediately
called the relevant departments, soon a JCB and truck came to clear and carry
back the debris and 70 odd bags of garbage that was collected by the citizens
during the walkathon. The citizens bravely wore the gloves and picked the
garbage from the lake and cleared most of the floating garbage.
The citizens had made
personal contributions for the clean-up drive, with no support from any elected
representative, it was also noticed that the local corporator who was invited
by the citizens was absent, clearly showing lack of interest and disregard for
the citizen initiative.
The citizens met the
objectives of initiating a clean-up drive, creating awareness and bringing in participation.
Hope today’s citizen drive will at least motivate the elected representatives
of the locality to contribute their time and attention and not just look for
photo opportunity.
- Kavitha Reddy
Also appeared in Citizen Matters