varanasi - shit hole of the gods

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:http://memestreamblog.wordpress.com/2007/02/04/varanasi-shit-hole-of-the-gods/

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:http://memestreamblog.wordpress.com/2007/02/04/varanasi-shit-hole-of-the-gods/

Professor, here is a nice project for you to make good, practical suggestions (even in the form of a research essay / paper) to clean up this place so that it is no more a shit-hole. Btw any creative work / suggestions by you to improve the conditions of Varanasi and Ganges might prove useful in cleaning many other places and rivers around the world. Look at it as a godsend opportunity.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Here are my top 5 suggestions for any Indian town:

1. The town has to build a sewerage system that extends to every single street and lane within the municipal limits. Any construction outside the limits should have its own septic tank.

2. Every house should mandatorily have a flush toilet. The owner must steal or borrow against the home value to construct one. Absence of a toilet can lead to demolition of the structure. New constructions won't get an occupancy certificate without a toilet.

3. There should be door to door collection of garbage with segregation at source. Recyclables out of the way, organic wastes should go into town-funded vermicompost heaps and other wastes into landfill.

4. Trash cans should be put up at every street corner, particularly near food stalls with the collection and maintenance responsibility outsourced to private parties.

5. There should be a standard set of building and zoning rules which should be strictly enforced. The enforcement departments should be adequately staffed and with high degree of accountability - a documented failure to act on a violation should result in dismissal from service.




Looks like you like NaMo! How many villagers get permits to build their homes and are volunteering to follow new rules?

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Here are my top 5 suggestions for any Indian town:

1. The town has to build a sewerage system that extends to every single street and lane within the municipal limits. Any construction outside the limits should have its own septic tank.

2. Every house should mandatorily have a flush toilet. The owner must steal or borrow against the home value to construct one. Absence of a toilet can lead to demolition of the structure. New constructions won't get an occupancy certificate without a toilet.

3. There should be door to door collection of garbage with segregation at source. Recyclables out of the way, organic wastes should go into town-funded vermicompost heaps and other wastes into landfill.

4. Trash cans should be put up at every street corner, particularly near food stalls with the collection and maintenance responsibility outsourced to private parties.

5. There should be a standard set of building and zoning rules which should be strictly enforced. The enforcement departments should be adequately staffed and with high degree of accountability - a documented failure to act on a violation should result in dismissal from service.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Here are my top 5 suggestions for any Indian town:

1. The town has to build a sewerage system that extends to every single street and lane within the municipal limits. Any construction outside the limits should have its own septic tank.

2. Every house should mandatorily have a flush toilet. The owner must steal or borrow against the home value to construct one. Absence of a toilet can lead to demolition of the structure. New constructions won't get an occupancy certificate without a toilet.

3. There should be door to door collection of garbage with segregation at source. Recyclables out of the way, organic wastes should go into town-funded vermicompost heaps and other wastes into landfill.

4. Trash cans should be put up at every street corner, particularly near food stalls with the collection and maintenance responsibility outsourced to private parties.

5. There should be a standard set of building and zoning rules which should be strictly enforced. The enforcement departments should be adequately staffed and with high degree of accountability - a documented failure to act on a violation should result in dismissal from service.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Here are my top 5 suggestions for any Indian town:

1. The town has to build a sewerage system that extends to every single street and lane within the municipal limits. Any construction outside the limits should have its own septic tank.

2. Every house should mandatorily have a flush toilet. The owner must steal or borrow against the home value to construct one. Absence of a toilet can lead to demolition of the structure. New constructions won't get an occupancy certificate without a toilet.

3. There should be door to door collection of garbage with segregation at source. Recyclables out of the way, organic wastes should go into town-funded vermicompost heaps and other wastes into landfill.

4. Trash cans should be put up at every street corner, particularly near food stalls with the collection and maintenance responsibility outsourced to private parties.

5. There should be a standard set of building and zoning rules which should be strictly enforced. The enforcement departments should be adequately staffed and with high degree of accountability - a documented failure to act on a violation should result in dismissal from service.

Greento Mato wrote:

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Here are my top 5 suggestions for any Indian town:

1. The town has to build a sewerage system that extends to every single street and lane within the municipal limits. Any construction outside the limits should have its own septic tank.

2. Every house should mandatorily have a flush toilet. The owner must steal or borrow against the home value to construct one. Absence of a toilet can lead to demolition of the structure. New constructions won't get an occupancy certificate without a toilet.

3. There should be door to door collection of garbage with segregation at source. Recyclables out of the way, organic wastes should go into town-funded vermicompost heaps and other wastes into landfill.

4. Trash cans should be put up at every street corner, particularly near food stalls with the collection and maintenance responsibility outsourced to private parties.

5. There should be a standard set of building and zoning rules which should be strictly enforced. The enforcement departments should be adequately staffed and with high degree of accountability - a documented failure to act on a violation should result in dismissal from service.

 
Unpractical. "Should" and "should be" is not working now. Never worked. Thousands of not-working rules are there. Still shit-hole.
Insentives will work. Govt. buy sewage and garbage from every house, pay Rs. for every lb., burn/incinererate shit for making power, maybe govt. make profit. Many variating possible. Example: subsontarct many services. houses deliver garbage + shit to street corner. Govt. use lorries for pumping out of sewage from communal stepic tanks. trucks weigh sewage and pay. Like i say many variabilities possible. Make creation. You be inventive with insentives. Insentives work, rules do not work.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Here are my top 5 suggestions for any Indian town:

1. The town has to build a sewerage system that extends to every single street and lane within the municipal limits. Any construction outside the limits should have its own septic tank.

2. Every house should mandatorily have a flush toilet. The owner must steal or borrow against the home value to construct one. Absence of a toilet can lead to demolition of the structure. New constructions won't get an occupancy certificate without a toilet.

3. There should be door to door collection of garbage with segregation at source. Recyclables out of the way, organic wastes should go into town-funded vermicompost heaps and other wastes into landfill.

4. Trash cans should be put up at every street corner, particularly near food stalls with the collection and maintenance responsibility outsourced to private parties.

5. There should be a standard set of building and zoning rules which should be strictly enforced. The enforcement departments should be adequately staffed and with high degree of accountability - a documented failure to act on a violation should result in dismissal from service.

Rishi wrote:One IIT professor told me that Ganges has the highest self-cleaning index.

Is that index something Indians came up with?

Rishi wrote:One IIT professor told me that Ganges has the highest self-cleaning index.

Is that index something Indians came up with?

Kris wrote:

Rishi wrote:One IIT professor told me that Ganges has the highest self-cleaning index.

Is that index something Indians came up with?

>>> This is the sort of wishful thinking by even educated Hindus that stands in the way of objective analysis. The city itself appears to be a disaster. Maybe we need to start over with a new Varanasi somewhere else and move it in 30 years and when that is also destroyed , we continue this procedure till the end of time. My parents went to Varanasi and given the religious significance, I got the feeling they sort of grinned and bore it. My mother was complimentary of Bodh Gaya, which she hinted may have been due Japanese maintenance. I don't know if she was talking about the whole place or some particular part of it.  

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:stop burning corpses and shitting in the ganges for a start.

nenu wrote:
It was a  dry and sunny day when i visited it. I can't imagine how it'd be if it rained.

nenu wrote:I don't know how bad varanasi is. I never visited it. But until my last india visit, i had this romantic image of myself going back to india and spending my retired life in peace and tranquility, in Tiruvannamalai, at the foothills of Arunachala and around Ramnashramam. Not anymore!

Tiruvannamalai is filthy beyond imagination with its open drainage system. To make matters worse, there's tons of plastic garbage floating on the sewage canals. Pigs were having a field day in the canals and they are the breeding grounds for millions of mosquitoes. It was a total put off. 

It was a  dry and sunny day when i visited it. I can't imagine how it'd be if it rained.

nenu wrote:I don't know how bad varanasi is. I never visited it. But until my last india visit, i had this romantic image of myself going back to india and spending my retired life in peace and tranquility, in Tiruvannamalai, at the foothills of Arunachala and around Ramnashramam. Not anymore!

Tiruvannamalai is filthy beyond imagination with its open drainage system. To make matters worse, there's tons of plastic garbage floating on the sewage canals. Pigs were having a field day in the canals and they are the breeding grounds for millions of mosquitoes. It was a total put off. 

It was a  dry and sunny day when i visited it. I can't imagine how it'd be if it rained.

Kris wrote:
>>>You pretty much can't get away from this in any urban or semi-urban setting in India. If you go to rural areas, you are bound to see greenery and relative environmental cleanliness, but you will have issues with medical care and a social/cultural life.  There are places not far from T'malai like this, but chances are you would feel stifled and want to bail in less than 2 weeks. If you really want to experience village life, may I suggest the Village of la Jolla? Heck, you could probably dig out an ashram or two in the vicinity. I think Chopra has a shop there.

confuzzled dude wrote:

nenu wrote:I don't know how bad varanasi is. I never visited it. But until my last india visit, i had this romantic image of myself going back to india and spending my retired life in peace and tranquility, in Tiruvannamalai, at the foothills of Arunachala and around Ramnashramam. Not anymore!

Tiruvannamalai is filthy beyond imagination with its open drainage system. To make matters worse, there's tons of plastic garbage floating on the sewage canals. Pigs were having a field day in the canals and they are the breeding grounds for millions of mosquitoes. It was a total put off. 

It was a  dry and sunny day when i visited it. I can't imagine how it'd be if it rained.

Unless this is a retort to the OP, folks who were brought up in India should not be surprised about open drainage systems and filth. For crying out loud you can count the # of cities with closed sewer systems.

nenu wrote:

this is no retort to anyone. I didn't even read the other posts in this thread. I just wrote what i felt. Open drainage system is not something that i grew up seeing even though i was brought up in india. The filth, the garbage and the open drainage system probably got worse from how they were a few decades ago because of the extensive growth in population and the rampant use of plastics.

confuzzled dude wrote:

nenu wrote:

this is no retort to anyone. I didn't even read the other posts in this thread. I just wrote what i felt. Open drainage system is not something that i grew up seeing even though i was brought up in india. The filth, the garbage and the open drainage system probably got worse from how they were a few decades ago because of the extensive growth in population and the rampant use of plastics.

Other than Hyd no other city/town in A.P has closed drainage system.

nenu wrote:

Kris wrote:
>>>You pretty much can't get away from this in any urban or semi-urban setting in India. If you go to rural areas, you are bound to see greenery and relative environmental cleanliness, but you will have issues with medical care and a social/cultural life.  There are places not far from T'malai like this, but chances are you would feel stifled and want to bail in less than 2 weeks. If you really want to experience village life, may I suggest the Village of la Jolla? Heck, you could probably dig out an ashram or two in the vicinity. I think Chopra has a shop there.

Actually, on our way to t'malai from chennai, we lost our way and drove into the interiors of the villages for almost an hour. That was a good thing that happened. Sonny got to see the real rural setting: the lush greenery, the neat little villages, the brightly colored homes, the village temples, the cattle, farms and all. More than anything he was impressed at how things work even without the GPS and maps. Brother was asking the roadside ppl for directions who were more than willing to help. And sonny was fascinated how everyone was everyone else's 'anna' and 'thambi' .

Anyway, on seeing my disappointment with t'malai, sonny cajoled me with: 'Peace and tranquility is something you find within you, mom. Place has nothing to do with it. You don't have to come thousands of miles to this place to find your peace. You can very well have it back home.' Nuggets of wisdom from my 17 yr old! I saw a Ramana Maharshi in him and decided follow his advice . So yeah, no t'malai or even your La Jolla for me. My home is my ashram. I ain't going nowhere .

PS: While doing girivalam around Arunachala, I saw a sign board showing the direction to Chengam. I thought about you and your grandfather .

nenu wrote:

confuzzled dude wrote:

nenu wrote:

this is no retort to anyone. I didn't even read the other posts in this thread. I just wrote what i felt. Open drainage system is not something that i grew up seeing even though i was brought up in india. The filth, the garbage and the open drainage system probably got worse from how they were a few decades ago because of the extensive growth in population and the rampant use of plastics.

Other than Hyd no other city/town in A.P has closed drainage system.

Really? What a shame!

So, guntur, v'wada, vizag and all those cities don't have a closed drainage system even now? srsly? jeez! I've been to tirupati. I don't remember seeing an open drainage system there.

Kris wrote:
>>>>I agree with that. We can re-create that anywhere. Barcelona comes to mind here, where despite all the sangria -soaked suffering , we can still find ourselves. Speaking of Chengam, my father started making enquiries about medical care in the area  and one of the natives weighed in that Bangalore was just a few hours away and I started getting nervous. Luckily, the fantasy evaporated by the time we reached Madras in the evening.

nenu wrote:I don't know how bad varanasi is. I never visited it. But until my last india visit, i had this romantic image of myself going back to india and spending my retired life in peace and tranquility, in Tiruvannamalai, at the foothills of Arunachala and around Ramnashramam. Not anymore!

Tiruvannamalai is filthy beyond imagination with its open drainage system. To make matters worse, there's tons of plastic garbage floating on the sewage canals. Pigs were having a field day in the canals and they are the breeding grounds for millions of mosquitoes. It was a total put off. 

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

nenu wrote:I don't know how bad varanasi is. I never visited it. But until my last india visit, i had this romantic image of myself going back to india and spending my retired life in peace and tranquility, in Tiruvannamalai, at the foothills of Arunachala and around Ramnashramam. Not anymore!

Tiruvannamalai is filthy beyond imagination with its open drainage system. To make matters worse, there's tons of plastic garbage floating on the sewage canals. Pigs were having a field day in the canals and they are the breeding grounds for millions of mosquitoes. It was a total put off. 

The truth is that no matter how deplorable and dirty these places currently they can be cleaned and maintained nicely in future after just a few years' systematic and well planned effort.

nenu wrote:

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

nenu wrote:I don't know how bad varanasi is. I never visited it. But until my last india visit, i had this romantic image of myself going back to india and spending my retired life in peace and tranquility, in Tiruvannamalai, at the foothills of Arunachala and around Ramnashramam. Not anymore!

Tiruvannamalai is filthy beyond imagination with its open drainage system. To make matters worse, there's tons of plastic garbage floating on the sewage canals. Pigs were having a field day in the canals and they are the breeding grounds for millions of mosquitoes. It was a total put off. 

The truth is that no matter how deplorable and dirty these places currently they can be cleaned and maintained nicely in future after just a few years' systematic and well planned effort.

how many years since independence? I am shocked to know that except hyderabad, no other city in AP had a closed drainage system until a decade ago (from what I understand from confuzzled dude's posts). That is really shocking! why does it have to be so? It is such a shame!

I remember going to my mom's native village when i was little. They were actually pretty neat because ablutions were done out in the open. No toilets and no open drainage system anywhere. That's more hygienic, i guess.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:how about the uniform civil code?  will that fix the public shitting?

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:how about the uniform civil code?  will that fix the public shitting?

When are you coming up with a full remedial plan for this?

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:how about the uniform civil code?  will that fix the public shitting?

When are you coming up with a full remedial plan for this?

i have no interest in trying to change the behavior of the visitors and residents of banares. i believe this is largely, though not entirely, a behavioral issue. there are places in the world which have similar population densities but where people don't shit and burn corpses in rivers. i also have no direct interest currently in designing and building sewage and waste treatment systems (maybe some peripheral interest).

Nila wrote:The average sewage bill for an average American is $40. How much do an avg Indian pay the their county/municipal?

Sewage Engineers are well paid in US of A. Just saying.