In Karnataka, a clash between the urban and the rural, a stand-off between India's economically privileged cities and its relatively disadvantaged countryside, has resulted in a gargantuan garbage crisis. The conflict may be a foreboding of the things to come.

Hundreds of tonnes of uncleared garbage have piled up in Bangalore's localities as rural folk in the surrounding villages blockaded the city's garbage trucks, denying them passage and barring them from dumping the city's refuse in their backyards.

Bangalore, the Garden City, could well be relabelled Garbage City as the rubbish piles mounted higher. The private vendors contracted to clear the garbage declined to lift the waste since they had nowhere to dump it.

City residents clearly did not know how to deal with the filthy crisis in their street corners and areas. Schools declared "bad odour" holidays after the unbearable stench from mounds of piled up garbage caused many students to feel ill and brought agitated parents to school doors.

As the heaps grew bigger, an unexpected and heavy downpour compounded the mess. Citizens feared an epidemic of mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, malaria and chikungunya.

For decades, as in the practice of the West shipping harmful waste to poor countries, Bangalore's garbage problem has been "out of sight, out of mind", as all the rubbish has been trucked to satellite landfills outside the state capital. When the city expanded into a metropolis of

9 million residents, the rubbish it produced grew colossal.

The current crisis had its origins in a July ban by the state pollution board on garbage dumping in Mavallipura, the largest landfill in the city outskirts. The board said the firm contracted to process the waste had failed to do so and was dumping unprocessed rubbish recklessly.

The crisis highlighted a disastrous civic situation in a forward city like Bangalore, whose citizens do not segregate the waste in their homes, offices or hospitals. Civic NGOs have been repeatedly  but ineffectually  drumming the virtues of recycling. If citizens handed over the recyclable plastic, bottles, metals and paper to the neighbourhood raddiwala, and composted organic kitchen waste, Bangalore would cut down its waste by nearly two-thirds, they say.

Ideally, waste should be segregated at source as "mixing creates a bad situation and chokes up the entire system", said Nitin Gupta, CEO of Attero Recycling which specialises in processing electronic waste. In e-waste salvaging, Bangalore is the most aware Indian city but general consumer awareness on recycling across India is still very poor, he said.

A direct consequence of this callous urban attitude towards waste is that Bangalore generates some 5,000 tonnes of solid waste daily. This unprocessed, untreated waste is dispatched by the truckload to rural landfills. It is nothing short of indiscriminate dumping.

There, these landfills overflow and play havoc with villagers' health and well-being, rendering groundwater toxic and making wastelands out of farmlands and grazing grounds.

One such landfill is situated in the village of Mavallipura, some 30 kilometres from the city, where villagers have endured massive garbage dumping for years. There, infections and chronic illness are common, and a series of recent deaths too are being linked to the dumping. Fields and water sources are contaminated, and the pollutants eventually work their way back to Bangalore through water and food chains.

Bangalore's recent afflictions  whether infrastructure, water or the north-eastern exodus  have much to do with its ineffectual government.

Expectedly, the new Jagadish Shettar government displayed a feeble response, replacing the head of Bangalore's civic agency, Bangalore Bruhat Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), with another IAS officer. It then tried to break the impasse between garbage contractors and those living near the landfills by using police force. State Home Minister R. Ashoka deployed the police to beat back agitating villagers only to meet with tough resistance.

The action incensed environmental activists in the city. "If villagers across Bangalore are justly standing up for their fundamental right to a clean environment, can the civic agency force them to accept waste under the threat of police action?" asked the NGO and anti-dumping campaigner, Environment Support Group.

Villages in every direction, including Mandur and Gundalahalli north of the city, blocked the garbage trucks. In a city where land is a scarce, expensive commodity, the government scrambled to identify new dumping grounds. The government announced one location after another, agitating villagers in that area.

Bangalore's Mayor Venkatesh Murthy pledged that the situation would get back to normal within a few days. But that is sounding like wishful thinking rather than a firm promise. The city's garbage crisis has a lesson for urban India's citizens, city administrations and waste vendors. A solution has to be found concertedly or many Indian cities will soon drown in their own stinky waste.

saritha.rai@expressindia.com

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