However, city-based environmentalists and activists have voiced their opinions on how this report is a farce and that they were not even informed of these workshops. The workshops also received a cold response.

These workshops are meant for citizens, whose suggestions PMC is supposed to incorporate in the report. Abhishek Waghmare, a workshop coordinator and a member of Greenearth Social Development Consulting Pvt Ltd said, “The average participation for each workshop was two to 15. Very few environmentalists were present.”

“Environmentalists have a very strong network. We were not aware of the workshops. A proper timetable should have been forwarded to us ,” said Vinod Jain, a tree activist. Mangesh Dighe, in-charge of the Environment Cell, however, claimed that some environmentalists were informed . “I cannot contact every single environmentalist in Pune.

The information was made public through newspapers. Environmentalists who were in our network were informed,” he said. Dighe further said that the first draft of the report will be shown to the workshop participants after two days. The draft will also be presented before a general body on July 31.

PMC has been publishing this report annually since 1997. Environmentalists accuse the reports to be mere tokenism and lacking of data. Saili Palande Datar, an environmentalist specialising in open spaces pointed out that the issue of hill-cutting has not been given due cognizance in the ESR.

“The pollution statistics of hills are also incomplete,” added Datar, who attended one of the workshops in 2007. Environmentalists think that the report has been often repetitive over the years because the PMC seldom takes action based on the ESR. “For the last decade, the ESR has said that public transport needs to be improved in order to bring down air pollution.

This year, only Rs 25 crore was given to Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd (PMPML), as opposed to Rs 1000 crore which was given towards road and flyover-building, out of the total budget of Rs 3000 crore.

This move encourages private transport,” said Sujit Patwardhan, a member of Parisar, an organisation which has recently done a research on transportation. Some activists claim that their suggestions are not included.

“My suggestions of periodical auditing of rainwater, dual flushing system at homes and minimisation of river bank encroachment have not been considered,” said Sarang Yadwadkar, an anti-water pollution activist.

However, Dighe said that most people who turned up were ‘only concerned about the garbage dumps or the nullahs next to their houses.’ Reacting to the accusations, Dighe said, “ESR is essentially the summary of the status of the environment in the previous year.

It only points towards action. If the report is taken into consideration in the budget, it may lead to improvement of the environment and betterment of the society.”