Braveheart pedestrian!

Kanthi Kannan is a Hyderabad housewife who cannot understand why civic bodies force people to walk on the roads by allowing the footpaths to be used for everything else except walking.

Hawkers use it. People park their cars on it. Shops encroach the public space. Offices monopolise the spot as exclusive parking spaces. She has forced, though not with much success, the civic body to address this issue. Its action, if any, has been mere tokens.

There was an ocassion when she broke her foot and could not walk with some officials to survey a poorly kept sidewalk in her city. They called her and said they were happy the visit to the spot she wanted studied had to be called off! Talk of insular civic government!

It is strange that the victims of this poorly administered public space are the pedestrians themselves who just don’t seem to mind. Their lives and limbs are at risk but she cannot persuade them to join her in this undertaking but she is not the one to give up. She rages on. 

There is a lot she has to say at her website http://right2walk.com. It would  good idea to at least bolster her efforts by telling her, ‘Lady,  keep at it. One day you would win.”

And who am I?

I am Mahesh Vijapurkar, a citizen  sickened at the mischief of the media, both intended and unintended, as well as the mindless. This is galling after 36 years in the profession in two mainline Indian, English language newspapers, The Indian Express and then The Hindu.

Most of what one sees in the newspapers would not have been allowed by my editors when I worked with them. Nor would they have allowed it today had they been at the helm.

Sitting at my perch in Thane, a city adjacent and contiguous to Mumbai, where anything, including a person’s soul can be had for a price, marvel at the citizens’ patience with the media despite the trivial nature of most of their contents.

Can I try to offer perspectives as and when I have one which alters the view, give a platform, and everything else that helps point a flaw in the system? I guess I may be able to and shall attempt that.

Hope it works. Let us see if it does.

 

Why this blog?

Media, both the print and television variety, seem proccupied with celebrities, crime, politics and political shenanigans. People centric issues get sidelined or ignored.

This bog would hope to focus on people’s issues.

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