Change demanded by the people

BANGALORE: The Bangalore International Centre recently organised a discussion on ‘Government by the people’. The discussants were Dr Ashwin Mahesh, co-founder and co-editor of online magazine, India Together as well as co-ordinator of SAAKU organisation and Dr Meenakshi Bharath, a social activist. The discussion was moderated by Aditya Sondhi, a practising lawyer at Supreme Court and High Court.In the talk by Dr Ashwin Mahesh, he said, “Remember what Abraham Lincoln said? Democracy is government of the people and for the people, but also most importantly By the people. We must believe that we can create the government we want, and the development we want, together. Then many things will become possible - we can clean streets and lakes; we can build public information systems; we can educate the poor and train them in skills, and so on.”“If you want to be aware of urban issues, you need to know how the city functions. And to know about it you should know what is the difference between what is happening and what is supposed to happen in our system,” he added. Based on Dr Meenakshi’s personal experience, she addressed the question of what can be done by people themselves for public good.“I was always uncomfortable with the heaps of garbage lying around the city that were making many people fall ill,” she said. In 2008, she first started segregating waste and composting at her own house, and also tackling it at a city level to impact policy making through an organisation called ‘Solid Waste Management Round Table’ that she’s involved with.“Over the last two years over 1,500 kgs of food waste at home has been converted into manure and an equal amount of dry waste has been sent for recycling. The 5,000 tonnes of garbage generated in Bangalore is manageable if all of us take the responsibility of segregating it at the point of generation”, she said.