VIZAG matters - Sohan Hatangadi's Blog

Our beach road is already bursting at the seams. A once quiet place to enjoy the beauty of the sea and relax has become a 24X7 Mela. Loudspeakers blaring, protesters protesting, traffic crawling slowly, frequent traffic jams and the relentless press of humanity. We do not seem to understand the importance of quiet common areas. On one hand GVMC with chosen beach road development consultants are  working on plans to decongest our beach road and on the other hand bodies like VUDA and others are planning to take up a completely unnecessary project with our tax money.  There is no parking for the existing aircraft and submarine museum. Now we want to integrate the aircraft museum, the submarine museum and the Victory at Sea memorial at a humongous cost of Rs. 40 crores! Meanwhile really important jobs that have been pending for years are ignored. For example our tourism department cannot find a few lakhs to print tourist guides for the tourist season. The interpr...

The ugly face of Tenneti Park.   All these Styrofoam  plates will long outlive  several of our coming  generations. Styrofoam lasts 500 years, and even after it has dissolved it's chemical traces will clog our ecosystem.    This is what happens with "beach tourism". Great to talk about it  but after it is set up it is no one's baby!

We go to our beaches for relaxation and some peace.  But now days, every day, we are confronted with more cacophony and chaos there. Our beaches are destination for myriad events. Variety programs,  food festivals, musical shows, marathons,  flash dances, protests, rallies, parties, awareness drives, and  hundreds of other events. Ahaa! We get an idea  and head straight for the beach to show it off to the world! Every alternate day there is some noisy program on the beach road as if there is no other place anywhere in Vizag.  Every week we are impacted terribly by the mikes, sounds,  crawling traffic and increased pollution.  Every program results in tons of extra garbage which has to be cleared.  Please remember that we are paying the taxes which GVMC uses to clean the beach road every day.  I can appreciate that some program like NAVY DAY must be celebrated only on the beach but certainly not every miscellaneo...

Every time we talk of tourism we want to cram something more on to our beach road. Our beaches are destination for Events. Food joints.  Shows. Sports. Flash dances. Protests. Rallies. Parties. Awareness drives and every other whimsical idea we come up with. Every alternate day there is some idiotic programme on the beach road as if there is no other place anywhere in Vizag. Every week folk like us are impacted terribly by the sound, increased curb side pollution and gridlock on our roads. Our beaches are suffering and the citizens are suffering. I appeal to all to stop this campaign to do more on our beaches. Leave our beaches alone at least from Coastal Battery to VUDA park.