The city bagged award for what? Solid waste "management" or solid waste "relocation" directly into landfills by private players?

The private players give a 10% cut to those in the administration to secure these projects....and dump stuff into pits...while there are so many fantastic NGOs that recycle the waste and "manage" it.

It is common sense for the Government to employ NGOs in this case...or experts in SWM "tell" these private players how to "manage" the waste...not just relocate it.

icon award, yay!

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GV you are right - here is a link to my blog on Mysore  that may enlighten the award givers for considering more awards':

http://www.mysorenext.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=1252&SECTION=7

and another interesting blog about Mysore's common man's crockeries that helps in conserving energy and our future needs in 2025 :

http://www.mysorenext.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=1339&SECTION=7

Outsourcing is the name of the game;  money can be spent without transparency through outsourcing, without accountability and quality assurance. Still get awards. 

Invariably majority of the foreign tourists make it a point to visit the interiors of the old city areas, take pictures of the naive scenario that is presented by the people while going through their chores with piled up garbage at street corners, dogs moving around and crows trying to steal a peace of meat from the hung mutton carcases in front of stalls, the sheep tied in front of those shops grazing, women folk giving bath to the babies on the streets from unmetered water connections, an old man sucking at his Beedi, a pawn chewing man spitting the red juice, street corner samosa seller waving his hand to ward off flies, list is long.

God bless the future silicon Tier II city and its awards.

Vasanthkumar Mysoremath

- heritage city of Mysoru

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VM avare,

Thanks for the response.

Whether private or govt run public utility programs/schemes, will be successfully in true sense only when the ultimate customer takes charge and validates that he/she has indeed received the reasonable service. Is the customer - Public doing that? I am sure answer is BIG NO.

VM avare, the lack of transparency in govt dealing is just the manifestation of the whole society as a whole. Since the ordinary public is not in the habit of asking answers, the babus and elected representatives have been conditioned to doing business discreetly.

Now that the public awareness is slowly getting into our consciousness, the onus will be on us to do the things that we just ignored for past 6 decades. Are we ready? Enlightened citizen like you should take a lead in using the transparency tools like RTI to get the information and issues that you often highlight on this forum.

Believe me the rust that has been accumulated for last 6 decades will not go overnight. It needs hard chemical processing and a lot efforts from us. For that to happen Praja is not sufficient. It will take efforts from all of us on the ground to roll up our sleeves and march for the action.

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@ Syed Bhai

You are right.  There cannot be a one man army or a few awakened citizens at Micro level who can kick the system on its butt to get up and serve its masters with proper contents, deliverables and credibles.  Macro level approach to revolutionise the society in the field of services should start at grassroots level and culminate in a mass movement.

I tried successfully, albeit at micro level - link:

http://praja.in/discuss/forums/2009/04/success-story-a-street-committee-mysore and gave a PPT demo to a full house meeting called by DC, Mysore on how it is possible to make the citizens also responsible to help the authorities serve better.   It was appreciated and may be, in course of time, with help from people like you and other prajas, a pilot project at a Constitutency level may take birth and create bench marks and serve as a best practice.

Latest info on my effort: My street is black topped - I roped in as many residents as possible and took the contractor to task when he tried to spread thin layer of tar/bitumen and with less width than was tendered and get away with it.  Our insisting him that he must adhere to the minimum thickness of 17 mm and when he did not budge, we summoned the Corporator and made him to be present till the norms were met.   Similarly, some other works have been planned and we will be at their back till we get our due services.

Similarly, people have to run from pillar to post to pay their service bills because each one of them is located in some corner of the city.  Some of us made requests through Media to  establish  Centralised payment system at one place like Bangalore One - recently CM while he was in Mysore has announced opening of such centers and also about 100 of them throughout Karnataka to help citizens to pay their bills at one place.  If this comes through, some benefits of e.governance would have reached the grass roots level.

Even if wishes were horses a sleeping army cannot ride it ! 

I will follow Swami Vivekananda's advice - keep trying again and again till you reach the goal.

Vasanth Mysoremath  

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VM avare,

Thanks for sharing the efforts of a responsibile citizenship. I am a firm believer in 'hard and sincere work always pays'. Therefore let's not club all Babus into one label - Corrupt and disgraceful.

It is in our own interest to work with public officers who are willing to take an extra step to fulfill the public services. If any babu is coming forward to engage in dialogue, share their perspective and willing to listen to humble souls like us, lets not rebuke him/her for the sins of their predecessors. Yes, the whole govt setup is thriving on the culture of corruption and pathetic public services. But in that dungeons, we do see some sparks of light could offer us the hope for small ray light.

In this example, the officer has came forward to share his side of the story. We don't have to agree to his version. But we can definitely offer our side and some tangible solutions that could ensure that story is not repeated again.

Let's reach out to those who are willing to listen to us and others. Lets build relationships with these good officers who could show us the way to be vanguard for better governance and public works. As you said, it is not necessary that in our own life time, we should see the end of the degeneration of public services, but we could definitely work to lay the foundation for responsible citizenry.

Here is a news story that offers a hope for the better future.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/35480/ias-officer-makes-assets-public.html

Shouldn't we appreciate his courage?

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VKM,

For your question " HAS THIS OFFICER BROKEN THE Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules by revealing the contents of a classified information as filed by him for official purpose?"

Here is the answer provided by non-other than Chief Information Commissioner RTI (now Ex), Mr. Wajahatullah. He is the same CIC who ruled that Supreme court judges are required to furnish the personnel asset info to the RTI applicant. Like you said, our current CJI tried everything possible to oppose that ruling.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/theres-no-question-of-public-campaigns-to-choose-the-chief-information-commissioner/538986/1

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@ Syed Sir

Let me explain - Every Central government servant irrespective of class must and should file "Property Returns" for self and his family as at the end of every year.  These are classified as confidential documents and are filed in the personal dossiers of the officials concerned, after scrutiny at appropriate level.

Question that arises here is:  HAS THIS OFFICER BROKEN THE Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules by revealing the contents of a classified information as filed by him for official purpose?  Has he taken specific permission to do so to publish them on a public domain when even an RTI application to the department would not have entertained revealetion of such details for public consumption.

Politicians are required to file affidavits containing their properties in their/family members names while filing their nomination papers for contesting elections.  One such - may be the only one - can be seen on this link:

http://www.narendrababu.com/images/NLNARENDRABABU_SC1_JPG.jpg

But the officers revealetion means nothing to the public because it does not serve any purpose, since public memory is very short.

Vasanth Mysoremath

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VM avare,

You must have reasons to see red in every possible acts of civil servants. Why do you think this officer has violated the service rules (conduct)?

He would be violating privacy/Official secret laws if he was publishing information pertaining to other entities. Did he?

1. Here in this case he has chosen to publish the information about his own personal property and income, not of others. Except for himself, no one else would have any objections.
2. This information is not fiduciary in nature which could prevent him to disclose via RTI's route.
3. He has not published any information which is of Sovereign in nature which could bring harm to the country or its people.

I would be interested to know if there is any specific law or section or provision that has been violated here. Nothing in RTI.

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I only touched about rules of service and even though I was associated with certain conduct of inquiries, defending and opposing during my govt service and am even now duty bound not to discuss certain matters, I would like to sign off from this particular subject.

Since the post is about Mysore and its happenings, about its garbage clearance, about awards, tier II city, development - destruction of green cover etc., here is a set of photographs about the widely discussed road widening project on Lalitha Mahal Palace Road and the covert way how certain things are being done: link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/indian.tanveer.photos/LalithaMahalRoadWidening 

vasanth mysoremath

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Is this what you wanted to convey?   They are only refurbishing what I have posted ... certain observations of the Judge Sir are relevant...

"And they should be?

Not only should be, they can be under the law. But the question is whether they should be actually placed in the public domain. That means placed on the website for any one to see. There are pros and cons, arguments for and against…

So, the nuances… whether I as a citizen want to know what are Wajahat Habibullah’s assets, I have the right to get that information?

Correct, correct.

The question is should that be available on somebody’s website so anybody can see.

Right, that is the question.

What are the pros and cons?

In fact it has been mentioned… the pros and cons have been very ably examined by Justice Ravinder Bhatt in this particular case that I mentioned to you… that they can be used to harass people and so on. Because you could pick up something from that, which is otherwise innocuous, blow it up and then use that as a form of harassment. So these things may require for you to see why the person is asking that information, although under the law it is not correct — you cannot ask a person why he is asking for information. Information has to be given and unless it happens to be exempted information in which case public interest, public activity — and this would fall in that category. This could amount to intrusion of privacy. But if it has nothing to do with public activity or public interest? To establish that, some reasons may have to be gone into.

What’s your own view?

My own personal view is that, as one of my colleagues said, we are so transparent I hope you are not going to ask us to wear transparent clothing. If this law means that you can go so far, you can even demand that you want to have transparent clothing, obviously all my accoutrements, as you may say, have to be transparent. There is no way that I can hide portions. In my case, in the case of the information commissioners, the protection of privacy also abates. You may allow the protection of privacy in the case of your colleagues, in the case of others, but in your own case I think to be true to the Right to Information Act, one cannot really plead privacy.

- vasanth mysoremath

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This is a TEST Comment
Salman Khan
Salman Khan
http://www.google.com/

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OK salman bhai

Welcome to praja.in (if this is your first post).

your test comment (?) is noted and if you are expecting a comment by any of the prajas, please post something that is worth testing - not a blank call.

Vasanth Mysoremath

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