Garbage city

For a lasting solution to our waste management problem, we need to rethink what constitutes waste.

Kathmandu Mayor Bidya Sundar Shakya is not known for making sense. Four years into his tenure, he is yet to do one major work that will fortify his position as a mayor that really worked for the people. Instead, his aversion to art, culture and aesthetics, despite representing a city with a rich repertoire of tangible and intangible cultures, is pretty well known. It pains the mayor to see a work of art created by socially responsible artists so much that he swiftly sends his crew to whitewash it. But it has been weeks since heaps of garbage have started to be strewn across the city, turning it into an installation art of garbage, and the mayor is nowhere to be seen. So much for his alacrity when it comes to removing harmless art work while the city residents’ olfactory and aesthetic senses go for a toss.