THE young newspaper Reporter would move on his bicycle all over the city no matter the sun or the moon or the rain or the season, his camera slung across his shoulder. He took pictures, wrote down notes in his small pad, ate idli-vada for a mere one rupee at any place, and drink water from any public tap without the fear of infection. Thankfully, in those days, political, social and administrative leaders of Nagpur boasted that 98% of the city’s water supply was “protected”. Those were the wonderful days when the city of Nagpur was a cosy, warm, close-knit community in which “everybody knew everybody else” (as a popular saying went) -- no matter, then, that some outsiders mocked at Nagpur as an “expanded village”. As that young Reporter described earlier, the loosefooter never felt bothered about Nagpur being called an expanded village. For, Nagpur was one clean, good, cosy, warm place in which extent of disease was negligible and the happiness quotient high.

 

Unfortunately, today, nobody -- including the Chief Minister or the Union Minister or the Members of Parliament or Legislature or civic managers -- can ever claim that the city’s water supply is safe enough for anybody to just drink water from any flowing tap. Of course, there still are lakhs of people who have no facility of water-purifiers and have to drink water straight from the tap. But then, the extent of water-borne infection, too, has shot up in the past 15-20 years. By no standard can this be described to be an ideal condition.

 

Of course, one is really not looking for an urban utopia in Nagpur. But is it wrong on anybody’s part to expect his or her city to be a well-kept, clean city ? Unfortunately, today such a simple expectation is described as poetry or utopia -- by the people who are proud to call themselves hard-boiled “practicalists”. Bah ! Forget the so-called poetry or utopian expectation, it is perfectly all right for any Nagpurian to expect to live in a “livable city” as per national and international norms. This idea does not talk about a London or a Paris or a Copenhagen in Nagpur. The idea is of a simple, “livable” city as per basic norms issued from time to time by World Health Organisation (WHO) or any similar institution of substance. Most unfortunately, Nagpur can never boast of being a truly “livable” city by those standards. Of course, as the pro-developmentalists often insist, the city has now good cement roads and interlocking block-pavements etc etc etc ... ! Of course, they will insist that the city boasts of a MetroRail like many big cities in the country have.

 

 

1. What about the lakes and water-bodies that the city has lost in the past quarter of a century ?

2. What about the terrible floods the city had two-three years ago -- just because the planners have left no place for the rainwater to discharge into the ground ?

3. What about the reality that it is risky to drink water straight from public tap ?

4. What about those hundreds of well -- mostly private -- that are never cleaned up as an official civic programme so that the city has enough water even in top summer time ?

5. What about the mountains of garbage the city masses up on a daily basis (for which there is no systematic garbage disposal plan, no matter the hollow claims of its daily clearance) ?

6. What about the hapless -- but private -- confession by the Health Department of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s Department of Public Health that it has no control over the quality of food sold in innumerable eateries in town ?

7. What about the acres and acres of encroachments in the city by way of unauthorised slums etc (because the administration turns a blind eye to the blight) ? Questions can be many and questions can be very embarrassing for the sensitive souls in positions of power. So, the last question: Are there truly sensitive -- and sensible -- souls left in the city’s power pyramid ?