Delhi: Badli
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Civic issues
2017
Paras Singh, Apr 03 2017 : The Times of India
The emblematic image of the municipal expanse of Badli assembly constituency is the smouldering spread of the sanitary landfill at Bhalswa. The vultures and other scavengers at the site create a dire picture, visually reinforcing the people's hopelessness about the conditions ever improving.And as the slum dwellers poke around in the trash amid the toxic embers, they are wretchedly dependent on the recycling industry founded on garbage brought to the place every day from north and west Delhi.
In such circumstances, perhaps it is easy to understand the defeated tone of the people when they talk of having to send new representative to the North Delhi Municipal Corporation. Told that delimitation has added one more person who can take up their cause in the civic body , Hasina Bibi of Sarup Nagar summed up the general feeling when she said, “Nothing will change. It is just one more person who will start siphoning off funds meant for our benefit.“
The civic challenges in the five wards of Bhalswa, Samaypur Badli, Sarup Nagar, Swami Shradanand Colony and Jahangirpuri -of the earlier wards, Libaspur was dissolved and the geographical area reconfigured into the current five -are almost insurmountable.
“The corporation does not exist for us,“ said Anil Chaurasia, who heads an NGO working with ragpickers in Shradanand Colony . He is not indulging in rhetoric: heaps of garbage lie everywhere, no roads worth the name can be seen and packs of snarling dogs roam freely . Chaurasia claimed, perhaps ironically given a landfill's proximity , that garbage was collected around once in a month's time, if at all, while the drains, thankfully for election jitters, were cleaned recently after five years.
With much of the region comprising unauthorised colonies inhabited by low-income residents, the sitting councillors deflect criticism by pleading rules. Mamta Rathore, the sitting councillor of Samaypur Badli, argued, “Rules don't allow us to spend funds in unauthorised colonies.“ She added, “However, other areas have seen much development work. We have opened community centres, an underpass on a busy road and successfully agitated to change the name of the local metro station from Haiderpur to Haiderpur-Badli Mor.“
But it is not just irregular habitations that have suffered neglect. Even the designated industrial areas in Sarup Nagar and Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar are in similar shape. “As you can see there are huge potholes and accidents are regular. Several vehicles have actually toppled over,“ said Sanjeev Kumar, a transport hub employee.
In Samaypur Badli and Bhalswa, as shopkeeper Satish Kumar pointed out, “Peo ple leave their cows, dogs and pigs to roam in public areas without the fear of the civic body impounding them“. Encroachment is rife, even in MCD Colony , where a large number of corporation employees live. “MCD Colony is like MCD -completely dysfunctional,“ said local wit Narender Juli. Senior corporation officials talked of plans to bring global companies to clear the landfill site and to erect a gas extraction plant to tackle the methane fires. But such plans have been announced frequently in the past five years.They were never activated, leaving the voters smouldering -like the landfill.
