Achan: Site of Stink
If ever you need to understand how it stinks to high heaven, venture close to a place called Achan. It is near the valley’s tertiary care hospital – SKIMS, and it is close to the valley’s famed waterbody called Anchar. The references from geographical proximity of Achan are relvant as it sums up our capacity to make contradictions sit closer to each other. A tertiary care hospital and a dumping site stinking beyond heavens just close to it, how great! Otherwise a sprawling waterbody, Anchar, and a stinking hillock placed almost in its bosom, apex of apathy! Now that fellow who said that paradise is in Kashmir, must be turning in his grave as the smell from Achan dumping site is sure to reach him, wafting around his long dead nose. Acahan is a site of stink in service of scavenging animals and birds, who can give us the actual measure of the foul.
The lead story in this newspaper, Achan Stinks, Govt Winks, should serve as yet another call to shake us into some action. It is not the first time this paper has brought the matter to limelight. One of the few stories that have consumed much of spotlight in media, Achan is a blot on the successive governments.
When we take credit for small acts of cleaning water bodies here and there, Achan should give us some qualms. When we lay foundation stones for insignificant projects and make too much noise about it, Achan should serve as a stark reminder. When our public representatives and government officials pose for pictures, Achan should stay in the frame.
The way Achan is becoming a festering patch in the city’s landscape, one doesn’t understand how the public representatives and concerned government officials sleep. The way this dumping site is making lives of people, living nearby and even good distance from it, almost impossible, it calls for a serious initiative.
It is a source of disease and it is consuming human lives slowly. It is a source of infections that contribute to spread of disease. Leave aside the apparent of this ugly, just think, how it is turning into a public health crisis.
If only a little portion form the Smart City budget could have been allocated to address this problem, the stink at Achan would have died.
With no malice to anyone, and a little expectation form all, you the public representatives and government officials, please smell the stink that the Achan dumping site is. Your nose is enough to smell all the stories that are buried under this mountain of garbage - of apathy, of neglect, of inefficiency.
