They brought ‘anacondas’ and ‘crocodiles’ down on the streets, painted walls, lit candles, signed online petitions, cleaned
garbage lying on the streets on their own. What have Bengalureans not tried in their endeavour to draw the attention of authorities to killer
potholes that dot the city. The city has always displayed unity and spirited fight, but much to their disappointment their demands have always fallen on deaf ears. It hasn’t still kept them from trying. With techies now hitting the streets on the first working day of the week, as part of Save The White Field protests that has 8,000 protesters raising their voice against poor infrastructure and bad city roads, Bangalore has shown yet again today that it really cares. Having seen their loved ones get killed by the hundreds of deadly craters on the roads, they have kept their patience and resorted to the most peaceful ways of protests with a sole aim of waking up civic authorities to the need of the hour so that more lives are not lost. However, the deafening silence and apathy in response to their coherent efforts have only brought out the most creative and wild sides of frustrated and angry Bengalureans time and again, here’s how:
Baadal Nanjundaswamy, 36, a visual artist from Bangalore, turned a gigantic pothole on the Sulthanpalya Main Road in the city into a living ground for a life-sized crocodile. The motive behind doing this was to attract the attention of civic authorities towards a 12-feet long depression and a broken water pipe on the street, both of which were making commuting difficult.
He had earlier painted an open drain in Kanakanagar main road near railway crossing, RT Nagar and also the concrete blocks of a lane divider in a busy street which were lying in a haphazard manner. It was one of the rare times when both these art bombs had led to action – the manhole was closed and the divider back in place!
An open manhole into the mouth of Yamraj - a death trap so to speak to give out the death threat message!
The Namma
Bengaluru Foundation (NBF), an NGO in Bengaluru, came up with this brilliant life size anaconda, made quite realistically. They installed it in one of the water logged potholes in Yeshwanthpur market in an attempt to embarrass the
Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and force them to take a swift action over the quality of roads.
An art installation put up by an NGO attempting to highlight to the civic body the dismal conditions of the road in the city. Their aim: The betterment of Bengaluru and bringing about awareness about the condition of the roads.
In 2013, Sunish Jauhari had moved an
online petition to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) against the back-breaking potholes of the city. To shake up the empathy of an otherwise indifferent Palike authorities, he had put up the pictures of a bed-ridden girl and a comatose youth in a hospital with serious head injuries. Two years down the line, things have turned from bad to worse, showing no signs of improvement.
None of this could lead the BBMP authorities to take charge of the situation and ensure these citizens their basic rights. As the nation lends them support for their peaceful ways of taking up the cause, it seems nothing but a mass rebellion can only now wake up the sleeping authorities.
