social justice is the fair and equal treatment of everyone who lives in a community in the context of cities it refers to the distribution and access to infrastructure public goods and services without regard to economic status religion gender or other demographic aspects of citizensunfortunately our cities are far from being the guardians of social justice on the contrary public infrastructure is skewed towards some sections of society one such instance is the budgetary outlay for punes river rejuvenation projectthe initial budget to develop the riverfront of punes mulamutha rivers was rs 2619 crore but it now stands at rs 4700 crorethis project ignores the impacts of climate change on the precipitation regime its vision lacks reference to riverine ecosystems biodiversity and ecological services of the river and it will turn naturalembankments into constructed ones these are some of the discrepancies that are flagged by citizens groups the environmental clearance issued for this project also has blatant misrepresentations by the project proponent that is acknowledged by the national green tribunal orderthe recent case of over 6000 trees being cut for the project is a case in point there is no mention of tree cutting in the environmental clearance certificateso what does this project have to do with social justice the rs 4700 crore being spent on this project violates the principle of social justice on at least two counts first the pmcs failure to provide clean drinking water to all citizens second the callousness with which the civic body releases untreated sewage that affects people living downstream the pmc has disregarded its duty to the citizens of pune as well as residents of solapur the city that feeds on the sewage of pune city the rs 4700 crore will not be spent on any of thisrise of the tanker lobbythe primary responsibility of an urban administrativebody is to provide its citizens with public infrastructure providing safe drinking water equitably is a cardinal duty of the corporation how does the pmc score herea rapid survey of housing societies revealed that the number of suburbs that are not supplied water by pmc isnot small the survey reveals the areas that buy water are vimannagar kharadi wagholi undri kondhwa wanowrie pisoli salunke vihar nibm road mohammadwadi hadapsar bavdhan pashansus road banerpashan link road aundhbaner link road balewadiand some parts of kothrud the list is longeven some new buildings in the peths are forced to buy water all these years their need was supplemented by groundwater sources but new construction in place of old wadas have diverted springs and destroyed aquifers compelling newer buildings to buy tankerssome of the large housing complexes in the newer suburbs pay crores of rupees to buy water of dubious qualitythe pmc budget for 202324 has an allocation of rs 1300 crore for water projects this is to pay for water to the 34 newly merged villages and the 24x7 water supply programme the outlay seems woefully inadequatewhen rs 4700 crore is allocated for riverfront beautification it is