Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the executive chairperson of Biocon Enterprises, on Wednesday had a request for Indian techies that went viral amid the worsening civic crisis in Bengaluru. She asked the techies to “rise to the challenge – waste to wealth and to a clean and green city”.
“What use is tech talent without civic sense? Can’t we use technology to keep our city clean, to discipline our traffic and improve infrastructure? If China can use robots to collect garbage, clean sewers, and control traffic offenders, why can’t we? Come on techies, rise to the challenge – waste to wealth and to a clean and green city,” she wrote in a post on X.
Her post went viral in no time, as most netizens overwhelmingly agreed with her take. A netizen commented, “Your ‘waste to wealth’ framing is especially strong; it’s both poetic and practical. Civic technology reduces waste, enforces traffic discipline, and strengthens infrastructure. Structural prosperity is built when tech talent channels innovation into public systems, not just private platforms.”
A second user wrote, “Spot on! Techies can build apps for smart bins, AI traffic cams like China’s—let’s make our cities clean & green (sic)!”
A user even flagged the difference between India and China in terms of implementation. The user wrote, “China can mandate implementation at scale overnight. In India, democracy means slower execution, multiple stakeholders and public resistance.”
Some, however, said that not everything is a tech problem and that people, IT companies and the government need to do their part.
“Anything to do with gov is the hardest thing to navigate for a ‘techie’. Also, not everything is a tech problem. Tech cannot make humans behave. Cleanliness, not being corrupt, etc., cannot be handled by building tech,” a user wrote.
Yet another user said, “What exactly can techies do? Just collecting garbage and dumping it in the city outskirts and rural areas is of no use. For a city of our size (and other metros), we will need 50 waste segregation sites for paper/plastic/metals/usable stuff, and mega incinerators to burn non-reusable garbage. All top IT/Big companies should create such facilities within their own campuses. Will they do it?”
