E-Paper
9-yr-old dresses up as Durga, walks on potholes in Hubballi
The little girl’s attempt on social media is part of larger efforts by several other groups who have come up with creative ideas to draw the attention of the local administration.
Aiming to draw the attention of the civic authorities to the poor quality roads in the city, a young girl, dressed up as Goddess Durga took to the streets to register her protest by walking the pothole-laden streets of Hubballi in north Karnataka. A video of the incident has been shared widely on social media platforms.
Wearing a saree, decked with jewellery and holding a trident (trishul) nine-year-old Harshita looked regal in the attire.“There was a lot of water and slush on the roads,” Harshita was quoted as saying to a news channel on Tuesday.
Her parents helped film the video.
Several areas across the state have been facing similar problems as citizens are forced to endure civic apathy in the form of poor quality of roads, bad designs, piling traffic, waterlogged streets, flooding, improper waste management, encroachments and other problems.
The little girl’s attempt on social media is part of larger efforts by several other groups who have come up with creative ideas to draw the attention of the local administration.
In Anjanapura, just off Kanakpura Road on the outskirts of India’s IT capital, a group of office bearers in one of the 80 Residential Welfare Association (RWA) brainstorm regularly to come out with their next creative idea to highlight their plight.
The group also has come with at least three ideas in which they have tried to plant paddy on the slushy road and make it look like an agricultural field, paddle a coracle on stagnated water after a heavy rain and have one of its members dress up as Lord Yama or the god of death to sit behind two-wheelers in a metaphorical reference to how fatal is riding on the streets , HT had reported earlier.
Bengaluru comes to a standstill at the slightest hint of rain exposing the tall claims of the state and the civic body.
Visual artists like Badal Nanjundaswamy have also used their work to highlight the civic apathy.
In September 2019, his video, in which an actor dressed as an astronaut and walking Bengaluru’s crater-laden roads (meant to simulate the surface of the moon) to highlight civic apathy had gone viral.
Interestingly, the video is again making the rounds on social media.
