I have been commuting along the OMR for the past two-and-a-half-years. Never had I seen anything like this before anywhere. Recently, OMR was flooded with posters and banners of different shapes and sizes of a so called 'Political celebrity'. Well, I wouldn't say there is anything wrong in putting up posters, but not every 100 metres! Balding faces in various angles and poses adorned the sides of the road and median, causing sight hindrances to the drivers and pedestrians. They were put up two days before the scheduled political program and were still up a week later.
The worst part— two days after they were put up, an opposition party put up their posters in the remaining space causing more distraction and disturbance to the public. One could hardly walk on the footpath— all thanks to the posters! Looked like the footpaths and medians were built to put up the posters. Just when I was wondering what the pedestrians did to deserve this kind of treatment- invasion of their space, another question popped up in my head.
‘How much money was spent on all these posters and banners?’ A few lakhs for sure. If only all this money were spent on the development of roads or infrastructure, India would have been a developed country by, forget 2020, I guess 2010 itself!
Manvitha Reddy, B.E, Civil Engineering, Sathyabama University.
