Bangalore- A citizen's critical view..

Let a dead dog lie OR It is a dog’s life and a dog’s death!!

Let a dead dog lie OR It is a dog’s life and a dog’s death!!

The recent festivities in Bangalore were joyous occasions for some, and not so joyous for others including our animal friends. Rains lashed Bangalore with the onset of the north-east monsoon, with predictable results- flooded roads, clogged drains and sewers, tree falls and overall a complete collapse of the city infrastructure, which the government and the IT industry have promised to rectify working together.

When ordinary men die, it makes news, but when less than ordinary animals die, it doesn’t deserve even a passing mention in newspapers. On the day Ayudha Puja was being celebrated in Bangalore, the dead body of a stray dog was seen on Richmond Road. The day before rains had lashed Bangalore. The body of the stray dog lay with gritted fangs near the foot of an electrical junction box and a light pole located in front of the office of a leading IT company- Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The location is an area that gets easily flooded at the drop of a hat and the fall of a raindrop. Rainwater and electricity appeared to have joined hands to deal a blow to the stray dog from which it never recovered. It could have very easily been the body of a human stretched out there in the agony of a death struggle. That would have been published in large photos in local papers.

But the 'unknown' stray dog had to lie there, with no one to pay homage to it, apart from people passing by who would try and avoid going near it because the cause of its death was 'unknown'. It laid there, its body bloating with each passing hour, its upturned eyes staring sightlessly at the sun and moon bathing its body in their light while passing over it at least twice or thrice. This was no highwayman shot down like a dog on the highway, but a stray dog, whose only sin was to be born in a city called Bangalore, where Animal Birth Control programs (ABC) do not seem to have an effect on the population of strays, which lead a life of extreme danger. Has Man’s best friend unnecessarily sacrificed its life to try and bring to the attention of the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) (a fancy term for the unfancied city corporation), what flooding can do??

The pavement in front of the AMD office was also covered by a large load of sand dumped on the pavement forcing unwilling pedestrians to take to the flooded road and getting drenched by vehicles passing through the water, while trying to maintain a distance between them and the body of the stray dog.

The incident brings to light several shortcomings in Bangalore’s systems. The fact that garbage clearance and other corporation personnel passed it regularly for at least two to three days in a row without any attempt to remove its body indicates the lack of concern the corporation has for the health of Bangalore’s citizens. The leakage of electricity is a dangerous thing in itself. Now we come to the flooding itself.

Can IT companies that threaten to boycott events in order to get sops from the government be held at fault? The pavement in front of the AMD office has been paved with interlocking pavers. These stones need to be laid in a bed of sand. Needless to say this shows signs of collapsing at parts into the drain below. The people doing the paving have sealed off the drain inlets so the rainwater can’t enter the drain in front of the AMD office, while a gap in the pavement just between the AMD office and the next building also housing an IT company goes uncovered, posing a danger to pedestrians! Why couldn’t it be covered? Is it because it lies in no-man’s land between two IT companies? The loose paving slabs in front of that IT company have holes in them, ostensibly for letting rainwater through, which functions perfectly only when the road is flooded and the rain water covers the pavement. These loose slabs act like a dam’s crest gates. When the remodelled drain below owing to its reduced capacity is turgid with water, the slabs are forced back by the vengeful waters, and the rainwater is released, while creating a watery trap for the unwary road-user.

All this occurs while government officials and IT honchos pat themselves while they praise public-private partnership.

-Sunil Pichamuthu

posted by Sunil Pichamuthu @ 6:44 AM
View Profile | View Main Page | View Photos | Go to Top