Indore has been one of the cleanest city for last 4 years. But there is a dark side to it which has been cultivated by the administration without much sensitivity to people's right to live in a noise-free environment. The garbage trucks under the Swacch Bharat Scheme play a small jingle on a repeat loop and this starts very early morning and continues throughout the day. Garbage trucks and waste management system which come under the purview of Collector office has been causing a disturbance in the peace and tranquillity in the entire city of Indore and in lives of its tax-paying citizens. The garbage trucks play “Swacch Bharat” themed jingles in full blaze. They play music early in the morning which is a time where the hard-working and tax-paying citizens are sleeping, doing yoga or engaged in other pious activities. In other words, the citizens are enjoying their right to life and personal liberty and your agents are violating it. The view of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India is that Right to freedom from noise pollution is a fundamental right of which no violation can be allowed. The garbage trucks are blatantly causing noise pollution outrageously and thereby violating fundamental rights.

This is how it happens. Say building A, B, C, D and E are five buildings in a row. The loud “noise” from the truck is audible to building E as soon as it arrives at building A. The truck on an average takes 5 minutes per building where they stop, park and then dump the garbage; all this while playing loud music. That makes 25 minutes of unwanted annoyance and noise to the residents of building E. This phenomenon is true for most building in the city. The residents who stay on the lower floors and ground floors are especially facing the menace of the building. This entire practice is draconian and blatantly violative of our fundamental right.

The solution to this is that they stop this loudspeaker approach and go for some silent awareness programs like posters or door to door or digital awareness programs.