Civic sense

Recently, a village well in the Tumkur district of Karnataka, about 40 km from Bangalore, was cleaned up after many years. This was not the work of a conscientious civic organisation but the unintentional by-product of a rumour. A villager is said to have found two Rs 500 notes in the well, and the story spread that there was treasure to be found in it. As a result, a good number of people got down to cleaning up the well, scraping out the accumulated mud and even hiring a pump to empty the dirty water. No “treasure” was found, but at least villagers can now depend on the most priceless asset of cleaner water.