Kuni Takahashi for The New York TimesUncollected garbage in Bangalore, Karnataka in this Oct. 19, 2012 file photo.In the wake of a garbage crisis that has filled Bangalore with mounds of putrefying trash, the High Court of the state of Karnataka has ordered the city's municipal authorities to present by Tuesday a plan for clearing away the mess.
Last week, the city's main dump at Mandur reopened, and on Sunday the city sent 352 trash trucks to the landfill to dump their loads. Rajneesh Goel, the city's commissioner, announced that the streets of Bangalore would be cleared by Monday. But Bangalore residents said Monday that piles of trash still remained around the city, and Mr. Goel's deputy, Salma K. Fahim, confirmed in a telephone interview that much remains to be done.‘‘Things are improving, but I wouldn't confidently say that everything has been cleared,'' Ms. Fahim said. ‘‘They are trying their best.''
Activists have complained that the city has done nothing to enforce recycling mandates for residents and commercial entities.
‘‘Segregation at source has to be closely monitored, and we don't see any change on that,'' said Wilma Rodrigues, founder of Saahas, a recycling group.
Residents who try to segregate their waste watch in dismay as the city's trash haulers pick up their carefully separated piles and throw them together into the same truck, Ms. Rodrigues said.
‘‘And that has led even those who are segregating their garbage to become skeptical,'' Ms. Rodrigues said. ‘‘What is the point if they continue to collect ga rbage in a mixed fashion?''
Ms. Fahim responded that plans are being laid to create central collection facilities where segregation can occur. But Kalpana Kar, another of the city's garbage activists, said that plans to separate waste at central sites instead of insisting that such separation be done by residents are bound to fail.
‘‘So they're going to truck it to these transfer stations, manually separate the garbage and then put it back in the same trucks and take it to farmers?'' Ms. Kar asked skeptically. ‘‘Does that make any sense?''
Ms. Kar said that the only way to make the system work is to insist that residents separate their garbage themselves, and for the city to enforce this mandate with fines. The city must have a way of collecting different types of garbage separately, she said.
‘‘It doesn't take a genius to know that you have to have at least two containers in the trucks to handle both the wet and the dry waste,'' she said.
But Ms. Kar said she was happy that the High Court had intervened, and she said she hoped that the judges insist that city officials offer a plan that will solve the city's garbage crisis for years to come.
