Greening the garbage
With World Environment Day on June 5 coinciding with the garbage crisis in the city, netas adroitly used the occasion to take pot-shots at their political rivals. When former Mayor P. R. Ramesh of the Congress party, who convened a press conference to discuss the garbage menace, learnt that present Mayor B. S. Satyanarayana planted saplings at the head office of the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Mr. Ramesh couldn’t help taking a dig at the latter.
The mayor, he said, would have done well to plant saplings at Mandur village, where the residents are up in arms over the indiscriminate dumping of waste.
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Going a step further, Mr. Ramesh even suggested the exact location where the saplings could be planted: around the periphery of the landfill. Ours is a ‘Garden City’ after all!
Counting road users
Poet Siddalingaiah can infuse humour even in the most solemn of discussions. Speaking at a function about how allocations made under the Special Component Plan (SCP) for guaranteeing funds for the development of the Scheduled Castes were being misused, he narrated an incident that had occurred many years ago. It was once found that SCP funds (then pegged at 18 percent) had been diverted to the re-laying M.G. Road. When asked to explain, the official offered an extraordinary logic: that 18 percent of the road users belong to the Scheduled Castes and therefore, spending on it was justified. Siddalingaiah asked with a very straight face: “I wonder how the official arrived at that figure. Do you think he stood by the road and stopped anyone who came by to ask what caste he belonged to?”