Have you talked to your Corporator ?

Have you ever tried to contact your ward Corporator. I did for the first time 2 years ago, to report to her on the Garbage problem in our street. It never occured to me that there is someone called a corporator that i have voted and is there to look after my problems.

I belong to the Hemmigepura ward whose corporator is Mrs.Veena Nagaraj (The ward being reserved for Women). I was very happy during BBMP elections, that our ward would be represented by Woman. I enthusiastically voted for Veena Nagaraj who belongs to BJP, the party which had a pretty good reputation back in those days.

So, when the time came to talk to my elected representative, i was in for a shock. This is what happened when i called up the corporator on the mobile number , which was displayed on the BBMP website :

A guy picked the call .I said -" Can i speak to Veena Nagaraj ? "

"Tell me.You can talk to me ". But, i insisted on talking to the corporator.But the guy did not give up.
"Whats your problem sir.Tell me "

"There is uncleared garbage in our street corner for the past so many months.No one has even bothered to clear it,despite repeated complaints to BBMP. The garbage is attracting lots of mosquitos,rats ,Dogs and even monkeys.Please do something "

"Dont worry sir.Definitely i will get it done for you"

2 Weeks passed ,but nothing happened on the ground.Just a false assurance. Later, i somehow contacted the Corporator of the neighbouring Kengeri Ward, Mr.Anjanappa. The matter was solved the very next day, even though it was not his ward.

This is what is the least expected out of a Corporator , responding to people's problems. The problems are  very simple like uncleared garbage, untarred roads,water problems. They are not complex issues that requires you to bang your head against the wall.

 If as a corporator, you cannot respond to simple issues in your ward, why the hell should we call you as our elected representative ?

If women's reservation creates proxies like this, then what's the whole point about women's reservation ?

How do you expect me to vote for you the next time, if this is the way you are ?

Traffic in Uttarahalli Road

With the asphalting of the Uttarahalli road, more and more people have started using the road.Be it Jayanagar, Konanakunte cross,Bannerghatta road,Devegowda petrol Bunk and even Electronic City, people want to use this road.

Even a year back, only a handfull of people knew about this strech of road.The condition of the raod was pathetic.It was considered very dangerous to travel on this road after 7 O Clock in the night, as there were many instances of bikers being attacked and looted on certain lonely streches of this road.But now all that is history.

The road is really good now with lenty of street lights and new localities coming up along side the Road.Lot of techies from the Global village campus take this road to raech their destinations.Many of the comapny buses like wipro,infosys take this route to Electronic city.Students of engineering colleges like SJBIT,JSS,Global,etc also take this route.

The only complain about this road is its too narrow.One heavy truck/Bus can completely block the traffic from behind, often forcing them to follow their pace.Surevey has also been done by PWD to widen the road from kengeri to Channsandra(RR nagar).But, god only knows when the PWD would start with its exercise...

Vrishabhavati aka Kengeri mori

Vrishabhavati or "Kengeri mori" as it has come to be known, is not a drain as many of them say.Vrishabhavati is infact the only river that takes birth in Bangalore and runs parallel to the mysore road.It has a dubious distinction of carrying the waste from the whole of the city of Bangalore.Be it industrial effluents, human waste , garbage dumps,etc , vrishabhavati carries it all.

Vrishabhavati takes birth near the Bull temple in basavanagudi and flows through major areas like guddadahalli,bapujinagar, R R nagar, kengeri and continues further until meeting the "Syanumangala" lake.It was a beatifull river once upon a time (even 40 years back) which fed the coconut grooves and other agricultural lands in its catchment area.In fact it is only because of this river , that you see so much of greenery in the outer fringes of Kengeri.

"We used swim in the river to beat the heat of the summer as school kids"-says an old kengerite."We used to walk all the way to Bangalore university campus, where the river has broad rock formations and green forests on the banks, ideal for beating the summer heat.What a beatiful river it was "-remembers an old timer.Infact some say that every day water from the river was used to perform abhishekam to the Ishwara temple in the heart of kengeri.The same was the case with the Gaali anjaneyaswamy temple in bapujinagar.It was because of that reason that the temple was built on the banks of this river.

It was in the 1970s , that a few of the industries started leaving industrial effluents one by one into the river, that it started getting polluted.This pollution was taken to great heights and in a way legitamised, when the bangalore city corporation decided to connect all the major underground sewage outlets into the river.This process continued over the years to turn this beatifull river into a drain.

It would have been so wonderfull , if this river was as clean as it was once upon a time.All the Kengerites could beat the heat by bathing in the river waters could have supported a lot more greenery, could have recharged the ground water table .But all that remains an utopian dream.As the fate had it, vrishabhavati had to be transformed into a big drain, "the kengeri mori".