Aftermath of the pujas

by October 25, 2013 Environment

More than a month and a half have gone since the Ganesha festival, but the idols and trash at the Kalyani tank at Kaikondrahali Lake still make for a sorry sight. There are also the flowers and leaves which were collected in big trash bags.

The Kalyani at Kaikondrahalli on Oct 8th. Pic: Rajesh Dubey.

This is a negligence of duty from the garbage contractor. Lake monitoring committee members have been calling them continuously for weeks now. Each time, we are told that it will be cleared within a week.

And weeks come and weeks go, the stuff remains.

The Kalyani at Kaikondrahalli on Oct 25th. Pic: Shilpi Sahu

Mahadevapura zone Chief Engineer Munikrishna says they are still looking for a ‘suitable place’ to dump the Plaster of Paris idols. Obviously, they can’t just dump anywhere but it turned out the contractor who got the contract to remove Ganeshas doesn’t have the license to dump at Mandur. He apparently tried to dump it within some village limits, and villagers in those areas have protested.

Next year onwards, we hope POP Ganeshas are banned.

Sections:

About Meera K

Meera K is the co-founder of Citizen Matters, the award-winning civic media platform. She also helped initiate Open City, an urban data platform (opencity.in). Meera is an Ashoka Fellow, recognised for her work building open knowledge platforms that allow citizens to collaborate and improve their cities. She is Founder-trustee at Oorvani Foundation.
Read more by Meera K

Comments:

  1. Vaidya R says:
    October 25, 2013 at 6:57 am

    Pretty much the same near Mallathahalli Lake. Two sides of the Kalyani abut the path around the lake. Last year they left them next to the path on one side, which are still lying there. This year they covered the other side. Wonder what they’ll do next year.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Similar Story

Beyond the parks and gardens, Bengaluru’s ‘wasteland’ ecosystems call for protection

by , , , , and March 17, 2026 Environment
Open Natural Ecosystems in Bengaluru harbour rich biodiversity. Take a look at what they hold and what we risk losing to unchecked development.

When we discuss urban nature, we often forget about real natural habitats. In Bengaluru, widely called the Garden City, most talks about urban nature focus on landscaped parks, roadside trees, and manicured gardens; in other words, artificial ecosystems designed for looks and human comfort. As lay citizens, we usually notice only such nature as we see around our homes, workplaces or other areas we generally pass by. While these places do have some ecological value, they mostly support a few highly adaptable species. This has strong negative implications for native flora and fauna that depend on open scrublands, grasslands, rocky…

Continue reading

Similar Story

The wild in the city: What citizen scientists tell us about Bengaluru’s biodiversity

by March 12, 2026 Environment
Spatial and temporal biodiversity patterns, as observed by citizen scientists in the city during 2016-2025, were studied at a datajam in December 2025.

Imagine you’re out on a morning walk, phone in hand, when you spot a butterfly you’ve never seen before. You snap a photo, log it into a citizen science app, and voila! You’ve just contributed to crucial biodiversity monitoring. This isn’t just a hobby; it’s part of a global movement where ordinary people collect, record, and sometimes analyse data about plants, animals, and ecosystems. Citizen science stretches the reach of ecological research. Every observation adds to unique longitudinal datasets that reveal phenology — periodic events in the life cycle of a species — along with species distribution shifts and population…

Continue reading