Noted street artist and civic activist Baadal Nanjundaswamy on Monday posted on Twitter to a video clip of him walking on a potholed road in Bengaluru, resembling craters on the moon, to expose the condition of the city roads.
Dressed as an astronaut, 40-year-old Nanjundaswamy is seen walking cautiously on the side of Tunganagar main road, riddled with cater-sized potholes even as vehicles pass by in the city’s northwest suburb.
Though the artist intended to shake up the civic agency from its slumber to fill-up the potholes, the video footage went viral on Twitter, provoking adverse comments galore for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for its apathy in fixing the roads.
A senior civic official, who was unaware of the minute-long video clip trending in the virtual world, told IANS that the bad condition of the roads would be brought to the attention of the engineer concerned for repairing at the earliest.
“Efforts are on to fill the potholes and re-lay the roads, which get more damaged during the monsoon season due to wear and tear and waterlogging. Frequent rains have been hampering repair works. All potholes will be filled up soon as the southwest monsoon ends by this month-end,” said BBMP spokesman L.B. Suresh.
Nanjundaswamy has used his creative artworks in the past to red flag the callousness of the civic administration in maintaining the roads and other amenities, by displaying dummy mermaids and crocodiles around potholes to draw the BBMP’s attention to the city’s infrastructure woes.
The video clip became an instant hit in the virtual world as, coincidentally, on the day when Chandrayaan-2 mission’s lander Vikram with rover Pragyan separated from its Orbiter about 100 kms above the lunar surface for its soft-landing near the moon’s south pole on early September 7.
