As 2005 has come to an end, and we are welcoming 2006, all concerned and informed residents of Mysore need to reflect on the state of our beloved city. It is only we working together can save the city from further deterioration. Mysore Grahakara Parishat started the campaign of "Save Mysore" on July 19th with the goal of involving all Mysoreans in civic problems. Based on our performance during 2005, we have a long way to go. This article gives a snap shot of how we failed to solve myriads of problems this year and what we should do next year.

Water crisis:
Despite several protests, meetings and consultations with concerned officials, and assurances by Ministers, we have not taken any basic steps to ensure water supply on a daily basis in Mysore. Water flow in Devaraya canal could have been diverted to construct a small bridge. Instead water supply was reduced. When the mayor made the promises that within a week water will be supplied to all parts of the city on a daily basis, the Commissioner denied them. Promises of daily water supplies were made repeatedly and broken several times. Closing down a feeder canal to construct a small bridge unnecessarily reduced water supply capacity. It could have been avoided by diverting water flow.

Finally Vani Vilas Water Works has computerized the billing system. But they cannot tell with any degree of accuracy the cost of supplying 1000 litres of water.

Vani Vilas Water Works does not have any idea of how much water is actually pumped and received by the city, what is the current daily water need of the city, how much water is lost during distribution, how many customers have meters, how many meters are working etc. The roof of the tank in Vijayanagar has so many gaping holes it may collapse any time. MCC has no funds to repair it. A standby pump given for repair is not brought back to Hongalli for lack of funds.

Pig menace:
Mysoreans will not forget the solemn assurances given by former Mayor Dakshinamurthy that he would get rid of pigs within a month. There were even dramas of catching pigs and MCC officials being pictured in a place where those pigs will be transferred. What a cruel joke! Now it is more than six months since the Mayor's warning to pig owners to remove them from the city and pigs are still freely roaming around.

Tamasha of pigs being caught to let go later.

Garbage handling:
Nirmala Nagara is a good project to get the involvement of the residents and to make them aware of the need to be concerned about the garbage. Unfortunately, instead of dealing with the fundamental causes of garbage problem, Mysore City Corporation has been concentrating just on getting neighbourhood committees involved in handling the garbage.

Piling up of stinking garbage at Excel plant.

The contract that Excel plant signed with Mysore City Corporation was never implemented to handle the city’s garbage with any degree of seriousness. When Excel failed to give agreed fees and operate the plant, Mysore City Corporation took its own sweet time to impose contract terms. The garbage handling plant is operating intermittently at best today and garbage is disposed the old way.

Will MCC find a competent company to operate the garbage processing plant in 2006?

Building code violations and vanishing footpaths:
Accolades were given to MCC when the Commissioner boldly decided to remove encroachments in some areas of the city. There were some lapses and allegations of some parties being favoured, owners not being warned etc. Still the public fully supported the principled stand of the Commissioner.

But the drive to remove encroachment stopped suddenly and it has never restarted as promised. Another promise was broken by Mysore City Corporation. There are thousands of building code violations all over the city and MCC has done hardly anything against the violators. How could Mysore City Corporation give license to construct a house over the water pipeline mains?

Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP):
When the former MUDA commissioner P. K. Pandey called a meeting in April of different stakeholders to initiate preparing Comprehensive Development Plan, some of us were delighted that Mysoreans finally got a chance to contribute and get involved in planning the future of our city. Our dreams have been shattered now. Even before completing his full term he was transferred and there has been no word about CDP since his departure. As a result, we are now having controversial problems like Makkaji Chowk, Devaraja Market, etc.

The central city area is already congested today. Some streets are used as parking lots. Soon after becoming the new mayor, Dakshinamurthy promised to rehabilitate Devaraja Market during his tenure. One more promise broken. Since nothing was done to implement the promise, Devaraja Market continued to deteriorate and some shops collapsed this year.

Now, the problem has come to a boiling point in terms of how to handle the interests of different stakeholders in this important real estate in the heart of the city. A proper well thought out CDP along with an institutional structure to discuss the interests of different parties would have solved the problem amicably.

Primary Education:
It is only NGOs like Prajayatna, Pratham, People Education Trust, etc which are trying to prevent the educational standards of government schools from going down further. The government has some good schemes like School Development and Monitoring Committees to improve the falling standards in our government schools.
The more urgent problems of why more than 50 percent of the children drop out before completing 7th standard and why 40 percent of the children attending Government schools are not able to read or write is not on the agenda of any of the political parties.

One good development that has taken place this year is the formation of District Education Advisory Committee under the chairmanship of Zilla Parishat CEO. Credit for this goes to the tireless efforts of Dr. H. A. B. Parpia. Of all the problems discussed here nothing is more important than education and Mysoreans need to take every step to improve especially primary education in government schools during the next year.

Municipal Finance:
ADB did a great disfavour to Mysore by giving a loan of Rs. 130 crores to MCC. What do we have to show for such a big loan? Roads are in poor condition as though no money has been spent on them. Loan that was taken to solve sewage handling has had little impact. More than 40 percent sewage does not reach sewage treatment plant and storm water drains are used to handle sewage. Tax payers have to repay these loans now. This will prevent us taking up the badly needed maintenance of water supply distribution, roads, schools (cess collected for education has never been used for that purpose), public toilets, park maintenance, garbage handling, primary health clinics, slum development etc.

Thanks to the incompetence of MCC, SAS property tax collection is in total chaos. Tax payers were in doubt about how to compute the taxes. Despite being an IT center, our tax information system is totally outdated. MCC officials keep on promising that it will be computerized soon for the last so many years. The latest fad is GIS as though it will solve all our problems.

Unfortunately, over the last few years, revenue collection has not gone up to keep up with the growth of the city. As a result, though we show a small surplus thanks to the regulation, we never have enough funds to meet the civic needs. Has MCC consulted any financial consultants to improve finance? Let us hope that they will seek sound advice at least in 2006.

Ill-maintained Parks:
There are more than 280 gardens in the city. There is a staff to maintain these parks. And in some cases, private companies have come forward to maintain these parks. There are also several instances of encroachment of park space. One example is that of Cheluvamba Park where MCC has violated Karnataka Parks Act by constructing residential quarters (now converted into a toilet) there. Will MCC plan to pay greater attention to maintain these parks in 2006?

Poor Governance:
2005 has been a year of broken promises. An excellent idea of MATF to get the involvement of experts and business leaders in civic problems was wound up this year. The above litany of problems gives a dismal picture of what took place in Mysore this year. This is mostly due to the absence of the rule of law in our city in every sector and political interference.

This is further compounded by the indifference of residents. Even a protest for something as important as water supply cannot get more than 100!

That brings us to another important issue of lack of concerned, informed and able people as our corporators. This year we will have Corporation elections. Will we be as indifferent as we were during the last election? Or will we take greater interest?

There is no use blaming the politicians. When honest and able people do not take part in election that vacuum will be filled by the "professional" politicians who will exploit the power for their own good. It needs to be seen how the culture and tradition of Mysore will help elect at least five honest and able leaders as our Corporators.

Dr. Bhamy V. Shenoy,
Convener,
Mysore Grahak Parishath,
Mysore

Courtesy: Star of Mysore