VIZAG matters - Sohan Hatangadi's Blog

Despite being among the first to enter the Smart City race Vizag is one of the lowest spenders so far. Talk and action are miles apart. To read more, catch up the below link on business world Smart Cities: The Sad State Of Affairs

Growing up with Vizag My article in the Times of India, Vizag Edition, 12 February 2017 S ome children grow up too soon. One day they are crawling then learning to walk, and then they are running, knocking things down, falling, hurting themselves, getting up, playing, laughing and then surprisingly disagreeing with us. Before we realise they have become young adults with minds of their own. To parents and grandparents this is a mix of pure joy, concern, alarm, annoyance, frustration and pride in equal measure, sometimes all together. Before long they are going to school, college and taking up a job. They get married and move on. Soon they become adults in their own right and we can scarcely recognise them. But this article is not about children. This is about our city, our Vizag. Infant years For those who have seen Vizag grow up we can appreciate the stages it has gone through. We have the memories from our childhood of Vizag’s infancy. We remember the narrow...

Will the real Vizag stand up? Sohan Hatangadi TOI dated 10 July 2016 Those who have stayed for half a century or more in Vizag have witnessed the multiple personality changes the city has gone through. These changes have been due to a number of reasons, the most obvious being the arrival of waves of settlers at different times in the city’s history, the setting up of industry that impacted large numbers of people and the desire of Vizagites to live in “better” parts of town. Over time the city went through huge demographic changes worth studying in detail. As of now the city has no single personality label. It is a city with multiple personalities and that is an interesting phenomena. The comfortable decade, 1960 - 1970 When present senior citizens were kids, our little town was all sea, fisher folk, beaches, rolling wooded hills, miles and miles of palm trees and a large expanse of swampy land on the west. Most children went to schools or colleges by bus, bicycle or...

Vizag's mysterious black hole Read all about it ... click on this link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Vizags-mysterious-black-hole/articleshow/46731793.cms?utm_source=fb&utm_campaign=toimobile&utm_medium=referral

This article appeared in The Times of India today. The original (and unedited) word document is also pasted below because its easier to read. Building a great Vizag Sohan Hatangadi Now that all the hullabaloo surrounding the separation and the elections are behind us let us get down to some really important business. First we must face the reality; Vizag will not be the capital of the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh. I hate that “residuary” word, sounds like something the doctor prescribes for poor bowel movement. Many Vizagites will be sorely disappointed. And some wanting to avoid capital punishment will be secretly relieved. No need to be capital to be a great city You do not have to be the administrative capital of the state or country to be recognized as a great city. Delhi may be capital but Mumbai has got more moolah muscle. Washington DC may be the capital of the USA but San Francisco and New York win the popularity contest hands down. Canberra is the ca...

The wise, discuss weighty regional issues Last month I attended a meeting organised by “Gravity 2.0”. No it was not a new computer game. It was an organisation meeting to deliberate weighty matters. The “Vizag Bay Regional Economic Summit 2012” was discussing how to “develop” the entire region stretching from Srikakulam to Vijayawada into a super city cluster crammed with industry. Speakers from industry and the business world trumpeted their achievements. The main speaker talked of how Vizag Port was serving industry and society. A COO of an automobile dealership told us how rapidly they were expanding.  Everyone waxed eloquent about their vision for Vizag. The dream was to build several ports and miles and miles of industries all along the coast and inland too.  Some wanted to put up more tourist attractions on our beaches. The key speaker also went on to say that farmers should give up farming as the remuneration was too low and they should work in industry where t...