Garbage collection is the true area of darkness in the space for civic governance. Repeated attempts by donor supported projects have failed to improve the situation. They have displayed the obvious failure to deal with the dominant realities of a city overwhelmed by filth and indifference to it.

The fact that Kolkata managed to clean up its city in three months with the World Bank's help and Dhaka in fact managed to attract more filth in a strangely organized manner supported by the same World Bank offers a lesson we should learn. It shows that donors have little to do with development success stories. It's the people who manage cities and those who benefit from it and thus have a stake in it that matter.

City corporations have a history of not caring and then waking up to their responsibilities once the population decides they have had enough and starts putting pressure. Unless we are by nature fond of filth we have over the years come to accept it as part of life. And most don't believe things can get better.

A new trigger is needed for people to believe that a process of change is possible to install. Crying for a cleaner city isn't enough. Exerting pressure to reclaim civil rights is what is needed.

The journey from military rule to democracy took a decade or even more and it extracted a huge price from all. Managing city garbage appears to be a much more formidable task than achieving the right to vote politicians to power. And a task we appear to have conveniently ignored.