Workaholic, dynamic and a go-getter. That describes 2007 Batch Punjab cadre IAS officer Anindita Mitra, Commissioner of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation. Ever since she took over as the chief of the civic body of the City Beautiful, she has been conceptualizing new schemes, strengthening the existing ones and implementing them with a missionary zeal so that Chandigarh counts amongst not only the best cities of the country but the world. It's no wonder that one finds her making rounds of the city early in the morning when most people are still in their beds to get a ringside view of what lacks where and how to overcome the problems and issues identified in the morning visitations to different sectors and urban villages.
Sixteen hours work schedule apart, at a personal level, Anindita Mitra is a fitness freak and over a period of time has discovered the benefits of intermittent fasting. What exactly is this? "It's simple. Having no meals from 8 pm in the evening to 2 pm in the afternoon for 6 days in a week, except Saturdays. No breakfast or anything," she says. That's' well 16 hours without a morsel of food. This entitles her to become the brand ambassador of intermittent fasting if there indeed is a commercial concept on it. Of course, she is happy with it only as a mantra of fitness. Many in the city, in any case, describe her as a brand ambassador of hygiene, civic standards and Smart City. The Resident Welfare Associations will vouch for the fact that she is the most accessible officer they have ever come across and is on the dialing list of the office-bearers of these associations.
She used to be an avid reader earlier but of late finds little time to indulge in her passion due to the nature of her work which is more or less 24x7. The last book she read was the Shiva Trilogy series by Amish Tripathi even as the philosophical books by Ayn Rand have been her favorites ever since she got into the world of books. A pet lover, the Labrador whom Mitra considers a part of the family, has been named Google. The inquisitive Google, who is now almost 14 years of age, considered old for a Dog, sits and stretches near the Commissioner with eyes watching her which reflects tranquility. Amid this, The Pioneer got in touch with her to get all the updates about her plans and vision for the City Beautiful.
It has not even been a year since you took over as the chief of the civic body. How do you see these weeks and months heading the MCC?
I joined in August 2021 but got hold of the things better in October. The Swacchta Sarvekshan ranking in which Chandigarh was placed at the Number 66 rank was a wakeup call for me. Service delivery to the citizens and managing and processing the waste was crucial to get going and improve on the rankings. We made it a point to involve citizens and make them realise that they have the most important role in the improvements. Campaign was run on segregation of dry, wet and hazardous waste. The plant for processing dry waste was closed for some reasons and it is only now that we have managed to float tenders and things would get going and the waste dump of Dadu Majra would soon be a thing of the past. Similarly, the processing capacity of wet waste too has been increased and then, we are coming up with another plant for horticulture waste like leaves and remnants of tree pruning. Then, the processing of sanitary waste would be done in incinerators along with bio-medical waste. For hazardous waste, we have signed an agreement with a company and this way all kinds of waste will be processed and taken care of. As service delivery too is extremely important, GPS devices were placed on the vehicles collecting garbage and monitoring units set up. Consequently, the services improved by leaps and bounds.
What is this concept of Cafe Loo in the city which you are implementing?
Well, this is not a new concept as such as a few states and cities like Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai are already implementing it. As a pilot project, in 4-5 markets of the city, we will hand over the maintenance of the public toilets to private players and allow them some commercial activity like setting up bottled cold drink and water dispensers like airports. They will have the incentive to take care of these toilets and it will remain clean all the time.
What are the projects on which you are currently working?
We are also working on stray dog and pet dog management. Sterilization of stray dogs sector wise is being worked out with an NGO. Target would be sterilization of two third bitches and one third dogs to keep the stray population under control. There would be geo-tagging of the dogs when taken for sterilization and then when released. They are highly territorial and have to be released in the same locality. Then, we have also planned a pet dog park as a pilot project. This would be a reserved space for the pet owners and they can come to this park. As pets are not allowed in other parks, this will be a boon for the pet lovers. For stray cattle, intensive catching and renovating the gaushalas are being planned.
MCC has just launched "Har Gadi Bin, Har Gadi Bag'' plan. Could you elaborate on this.
This is to sensitize citizens towards littering and ban on single use plastic. If every citizen keeps a shopping bag in his/her car, plastic bags can be completely eliminated from market areas. If every car has a dustbin, and citizens put their thrash in the same, littering can be greatly reduced. MCC and RLA have tied up with all the car dealers that both at the time of sale of a new car, and at the time of servicing, the car dealer shall provide the customer with a dustbin and a shopping bag to try and inculcate these habits in citizens. RLA will make it compulsory for citizens who come to renew their registrations, to install dustbins and keep cloth/jute shopping bags in the vehicles. This is an important step as Chandigarh has the highest vehicular density anywhere in the country at 878 registered vehicles per 1000 persons.
What are the other initiatives to get rid of plastic bags?
MCC has been taking several steps to curb plastic menace. We have started a selfie with a shopping bag/selfie with a bottle (to reduce the use of plastic disposable water bottles) in which citizens have been asked to tag the MCC social media handles. Recently, a series of events were held with MWAs in which a cash prize of 1 lac has been announced for the first MWA which becomes totally plastic free. Progressive MWAs like sector 46 have started giving discounts to citizens who come with their own shopping bags. MCC has also set up a cloth bag outlet, manned by a SHG in the Sabzi Mandi of Sector 26, to promote use of Cloth/Jute bags and discourage use of single use plastic. A dedicated joint task force of MCC and CPCC will continue to check all places where hoarding of plastic is being done. In the past 6 months, 935 challans of littering and 721 challans of use of banned plast
