Refuse piles up by roadsides as government and Corporation slug it out

On December 20, 2011, when the last truckloads of garbage from the capital city rolled into the solid waste treatment plant at Vilappilsala, not many in the city thought that the next day would be any different. Harsh reality dawned the next morning. The city could not longer ‘export’ its garbage. A year later, most of the high-rises in the city have their own solid-waste treatment systems, thousands of houses have a pipe-compost facility, five schools in the city have a biogas plant each, and even the headquarters of the city Corporation will have a biogas plant up and running in less than two weeks. That is the sunny side of the story.

This summer, the capital city and its suburbs are in the grip of acute water shortage. In a multi-part series The Hindu examines the diverse ways the problem has impacted the people.

Water taps that can do little more than drip, wells that give no more water, water tanker operators who know that people would pay anything for that precious potful… summertime is often cruel to the residents of the capital city.

The inevitability of finding new dumping sites for garbage generated in the capital city was thrust to the fore on Monday when the collective will of the people of Vilappil panchayat sent back two

Janakiya Samithi to block garbage trucks from Wednesday