In the blockbuster movie “Lageraho Munnabhai“, there is a situation where Mr. Murali Prasad Sharma addresses the senior citizens about Mahatma Gandhi and to an answer he says “….turn down all statues of Mahatma in the roads, parks & wherever, take down all the photos placed on walls, and……., if you want to keep somewhere, let’s have a place for Mahatma in our hearts“. Forget about in hearts, it’s our sorry state that we don’t even keep his statues at good places, other than the big one before assembly. Sorry, that’s a different story here.
Our Andhra Pradesh government is spending billions of rupees for widening roads and for providing good infrastructure for citizens. Don’t ask who is a real beneficiary? But, when you are spending money, why can’t you plan in a better way to do this. I fully appreciate that you are building great roads and widening them for us, us?
Please look at Somajiguda & Nagarjuna circles, which are in the heart of city, where at peak times the average speed is 10kms or below. To widen these circles, millions of rupees has been spent, but is it the best effort? If we have a close look, in those circles we find two statues of two different great personalities of our country. The question here will not be, who are they? Question of hour is, really citizens of Hyderabad need those statues there.
Take the Somajiguda circle, when someone is coming from Rajbhavan road towards CM camp office, the driver has to drive very carefully to turn his vehicle at this circle, as he/she may go and hit this statues as this statue stand exactly opposite and beside this there is traffic island, where no police stands inside here, times it happened someone hits this traffic islands also. To say about someone, who is coming from Begumpet and going towards Panjagutta, the driver of vehicle can’t see the road towards Panjagutta, all that he/she can see is only the statue in front of them. Take a half circle around the statue and then go. Here, half of the road is completely occupied by this giant larger than life statue (check out above pictures).
Take Nagarjuna Circle. Flyover built, roads widened, traffic is diverted and now it’s okay. It’s okay only than past, why can’t we make it perfect. Here, again the same story, story of another statue and vehicle drivers. The whole road is widened and created a lot of space for vehicles, thanks for it. But, look at this giant statue in middle of this circle. Not from a single way, from all three ways this statue is standing in middle, except from Road no 1 to Road no 2. As a new mega shopping mall coming at this corner, in future this corner will also gets busy with parked vehicles and standing people, then no exceptions to this corner also.
As I given example of Lageraho Munnabhai dialogue, if we want to respect our Leaders by placing statues in public places, keep them a side of road, or like as Tankbund. If these statues are placed many days back, before all these developments, then why can’t we replace them to another place, as we did to Telugu Talli idol in the past? When we can replace Telugu Talli idol, can’t we do it those statues. Please no debate of, is Telugu Talli great or those leaders?
Don’t mix citizen rights and facilities with politics. After all, all leaders are there for citizens and for their interest. Do needed, to provide us better infrastructure.
