A man sets fire to garbage at Tharpakna. Picture by Manik Bose

Ranchi, Oct. 31: Residents, shopkeepers, hotel owners and even roadside food vendors today joined hands by lighting up bonfires at street corners to get rid of the mounting garbage.

The unique gesture was prompted by the accumulating garbage and the nauseating stench emanating from them due to the Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) sanitation workers entering its third day today.

The indigenous idea of a the “safe means of garbage disposal” caught on with the public quickly.

By afternoon, as the sky darkened and a light drizzle started, the number of bonfires received a setback. But as soon as rain stopped by evening and most parts of the city was plunged into darkness due to the central grid’s curtailment of power allocation to Jharkhand, the number of streetside bonfires shot up.

The bonfires came as a boon for everyone, providing instant relief to passersby as temperatures plummeted and a thick fog enveloped many areas of the capital. On a daily average, Ranchi generates around 360 tonnes of garbage. With sanitation workers staying off duty for the past three days, a minimum of 1,000 tonnes of garbage are piled on city streets.

“Unable to bear the sight of flying plastics, used disposable plates, bits of paper and other rubbish and the nauseating stench, we hit upon this idea of getting our staff to collect the garbage at fixed places and lighting up bonfires. This may not entirely be a safe ways of disposing garbage, but we felt that it to be effective under the present circumstances,” said shopkeepers and hotel owners on Kutchery Road.