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Plan with citizens

Articles are appearing about master plan for the city of Bangalore.

There is a need for citizen partnership in this huge plan for our city.

As we have seen this year like previous years, city struggles with lack of water and when it rains the streets are flooded.

Few years ago, people would have found the idea of flood in a city with no rivers or seas ridiculous. But not now. Now every city in India shivers when it rains.

Why? Why is the much anticipated rain becomes a curse?

Because of our craze for cement. Every inch of the roads and houses and courtyards are cemented and there is no place for the rain water to percolate. What can water do, except to flood.

There was a talk about rain water harvesting being compulsory few years ago. Is the rules still there? Is it being implemented? Is it being implemented in large corporate buildings? Government buildings?

If all the possible buildings harvest rain water, many of them become self sufficient.

And the pavements. They can use some kind of self locking bricks with a gap of few inches in between for the water to percolate. Is it possible?

And for storm water drains, why can't these drains have a pit with some gravels on top every few hundred meters? So that what ever amount is possible is drained inside the earth.

And the lakes. Bangalore has a large number of filthy lakes. Sorry for being rude. How many of them can be renovated with corporate and citizen partnerships? Will it help in water conservation and flood situation?

What about roads?  Just like NICE, the maintenance of roads can be completely handed over to private companies and they can be made liable financially for accidents caused by bad maintenance.

These are few ideas a house wife can come up with. You can image if ideas are crowd sourced by experts and intellectuals, how great it is going to be.

Because we need our city to live for us to live. And we should find ways to do that.


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