Clean Kodagu: A shortfall in performance?

By Reshma Gowramma

Educator at KALS.

Drive through Kodagu at dawn and the district still looks like a postcard – rolling coffee estates, drifting mist, and forest-lined roads that seem untouched by time. But look a little closer. At the curve of a village road, near a bus stop, along a drainage channel, plastic waste quietly gathers. The contrast is stark: extraordinary natural beauty shadowed by ordinary human carelessness

Every day during my 54-kilometre drive to and fro work from Srimangala to Gonikoppal, one thought refuses to leave my mind: are we failing Swachh Bharat and Swachha Kodagu?What should be a scenic journey through one of the most ecologically sensitive regions of Karnataka instead becomes a daily reminder of our collective neglect. Trash piled along roadsides, plastic choking drains, and For years, initiatives like Swachh Bharat Abhiyan have urged citizens to rethink their habits.

Awareness campaigns have been conducted. Boards have been installed. Clean-up drives make for good photographs. Yet, once the banners are folded and the cameras are gone, the old habits often return.

The real issue is not the absence of programmes; it is the absence of ownership. Civic sense does not begin in public rallies. It begins in private choices – the decision to hold onto a wrapper until a bin is found, to refuse unnecessary plastic, to ensure household waste is segregated, to prevent drains from being clogged. These actions rarely make headlines, but they define a community’s maturity.

In a hill district like Kodagu, negligence carries heavier consequences. Blocked waterways contribute to flooding. Plastic waste chokes streams that feed larger river systems. With memories of landslides and heavy monsoons still fresh, environmental indifference is no longer a harmless habit – it is a risk.

Infrastructure certainly matters. Efficient waste collection and consistent monitoring are essential responsibilities of local authorities. But even the best systems collapse without citizen cooperation. Cleanliness cannot be outsourced.

Kodagu often speaks proudly of its identity – its discipline, its connection to the land, its unique cultural ethos. But pride without responsibility becomes hypocrisy. We cannot celebrate our rivers in speeches and suffocate them with plastic in practice. We cannot blame authorities for every pile of garbage when much of it is thrown from private vehicles by educated hands.

If this indifference continues, no campaign will save us. Not more funds, not more meetings, not more slogans. A district that cannot manage its waste cannot claim moral high ground on environmental conservation.

The uncomfortable truth is this: Kodagu is not being dirtied by outsiders alone. It is being dirtied by its own people.

And until we accept that – openly and honestly – the mist may hide our hills each morning, but it will not hide our collective failure.