Anagha Speaks

If you want to see how your city looks like, now is the time, with hoardings and banners taken down. If these hoardings and banners come up and dot every skyline, every chowk, every signal and ever corner, the city's aesthetic is lost amongst the glossy photographs of political leaders and political aspirants, Aadhar card announcements and birthday wishes! As these hoardings are coming down ruthlessly (thanks to the Hon. Commissioner Mahesh Pathak for taking the HC directive seriously), I see that there are primarily two categories of hoardings. One, are large glittery advertisements, actually mounted on massive gantries and steel structures. While the second category consist of flex banners on corners mounted on simple wooden posts. I always knew that these flex banners are illegal and have spoken against them time and again in various platforms and also written blogs about them. But I was shocked to see that even the, seemingly 'legal' hoardings are also illega...

Just last week I had begun to compile a blog post on Pune's infamous Chandni Chowk and its precarious traffic and safety situation. While I was writing my blog, a young motorbike riding student was rammed into by a school bus in this very Chandni Chowk, to lose his life at the age of 18. Suddenly, overnight, the Chandni Chowk witnessed citizen and political protests and believe me, when I say that in 2 days, all encroachments were removed, the road was widened by mobilizing 3-4 JCBs and the road resurfaced during the night. The reaction of the otherwise slumbering administration was worth watching!  However, I am left wondering how the reaction of the political and administrative departments is completely missing the point of the tragedy. The Chandni Chowk is, because of its ill design, high slopes and cramped road widths, a spot of slow moving traffic. So a fatality, which occurred would actually have been of a greater magnitude if the traffic was faster moving. But the ...