VIZAG matters - Sohan Hatangadi's Blog

OUR SEA IS DYING! While we deal with issues percieved as priority, our greatest asset, our beloved sea, is DYING. We are killing it ourselves. Please read the attached Marine Health news report n the Times of India today. Vizagites, if we want to save our sea we must take up the issue with our administration. We must turn away from the inane subjects that distract us and turn our  focus on the more important issues. One of them is the damage we are doing to our sea.

Public opinion is finally building up. It is great to see the press voicing such concerns!   Now, we must play our part. JUST AVOID ATTENDING ANY BEACH EVENT FOR ONE YEAR. It will stop this spiraling madness of taking every event to our beaches. Even we the NGOs should avoid taking every activity to the beach road unless it is absolutely necessary. Every member is so competent in use of social media that we could have the event anywhere else and we will still get the audience. Please Share !

 This GVMC initiative must be recognized as path breaking. Tree moving has been known from a long time and we have seen  YouTube videos of machines purpose built for this work. Tree transplantation video But this is probably the first time our civic body has aggressively moved to save a full grown tree. If such an attitude is adopted we can expect to reverse the decline in green cover of our cities.

As in January 2017 and now in Dec 2017  temple replicas have been put up on the beach for Visakha Utsav which is essentially a tourist promotion event. Cardboard temples 1.Faith is personal and the state government encouraging such mass promotion of temples in the name of tourism does not reflect a modern society. 2. The government is making a commercial "franchise" out of these temples. Like a branded store opening branches in different areas. Places of religious worship have a sanctity of its own by virtue of being there for centuries. The idea that we build Plaster of Paris models of those temples and prey upon the visitor's faith somehow appears dishonest. 3. The Constitution of India recognises all religions equally. We are a secular and pluralistic country. If we build temples why not mosques, churches and Gurudwaras? Are we making temples because we are a majority Hindu area? There is something  morally wrong in this thinking. 4. If we want religio...

A few days ago I had written about the need to have a clear policy on waterfalls management. Please see the message that follows. I realise that for many this sounds like a far-fetched idea. "What impact could a waterfall in the Eastern ghats miles away from us have on us?" we may ask. We may feel that it is just an intellectual exercise with no real value. The fact is that it DOES IMPACT US in more ways than one but I will leave that to another occasion to expand. Coincidentally I visited several water flow sites in the hills some with waterfalls and others with water flowing over rocks. It was shocking to see that all these sites were filthy and in a few years will become unbearable to visit. The tourism department's objective is to show that they have developed a new tourist spot. They do not give a damn about how these spots can be maintained. A simple argument they have is "anyway visitors are coming here, all we are doing is making steps so...

Say goodbye to our beaches Appeared in Times of India Vizag Edition on 03 April 2017 Vizag is a coastal city and the best part of living in a place like this is access to our beautiful beaches. We take for granted our right to walk on to the beach sand and wade in the waters of the Bay of Bengal. Do we need permission to visit the beach? Do we have to buy a ticket to enjoy the sea? Obviously not! That is because the sea is our common property and a public place that we can visit any time we want to. But is this going to change soon? Old timers will recollect the beaches of old Vizag with nostalgia. Most of the Vizagites lived in the “Old Town” near Visakhapatnam Port Trust channel. Families lived within a few hundred yards of the beach, and children played on the beach and swam in the sea whenever they could. Hundreds of fishing boats lined the beach and fishermen went fishing every day to bring in a bounty of fish that they sold at the beach or in the markets making a decent l...

The banyan trees at the recruiting office My article that appeared in The Times of India  on 11 December 2016 Half a century ago, in old Vizag, near the recently restored lighthouse, stood a recruiting office under the shade of large banyan trees. Men for the army, navy and air force were recruited here. The first floor of this building served as the residence of M.K. Unni Menon and his family. He was in-charge of recruitment. Mrs. Menon was a hospitable lady who encouraged children to gather at her home and play in the recruiting office grounds. These “grounds” were not just some open area but an exciting, mysterious, magical world where many children got in touch with the wonders of the nature. Banyan trees The recruiting office ‘grounds’ and surrounding areas had two massive banyan trees ( Ficus benghalensis ). These could be accessed by friends of the Menons. There was another large tree outside the grounds to the East which was in the public domain. These maj...

It is disheartening to see such news. We have so much to do but get stuck in a quagmire of ego. As this structure will be generating so much harmful agents they should be taking APPCB's approval. I hope the IT department keeps an eye on their profits and charges them to the hilt.  In a bid to massage egos we are damaging our environment. The Ganesha Idol should aspire to be most beautiful and most eco friendly in India. Not the tallest one. The income should go into reviving old schools and public structures not line the pockets of the already wealthy. And the biggest laddoo! What does it tell about our society? Religion is made into a tamasha. At least local administration should not support and in fact dissuade this type of spectacle. End of my morning crib.

STOP LAYOUTS FROM DESTROYING OUR RURAL LANDSCAPE Ask anyone if they would like to live in a house surrounded by trees. Wherever they live nine out of ten would say “yes”.  Yet layout developers do not seem to understand the modern customer’s preference. As we drive through the countryside admiring the farms and tree-filled rural greenery we come across several brown layouts with great big arches and fancy names. These layouts are generally empty lands crisscrossed with fresh bitumen roads and devoid of trees or character. These layouts take the place of charming farm lands and mixed tree forests. We are losing thousands of acres of farm lands and green cover every year in the name of layout development. Loss of tree cover Developers buy 20 to 100 acres of farm land from farmers in the rural areas. These lands are generally full of shrubs, small trees and a few large ones. Some of the trees are 50 to 100 year old banyan, peepul, neem, tamarind, mango and jackfruit that ha...

The Pushkarams Phenomena http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/visakhapatnam/The-Pushkarams-phenomenon/articleshow/48129734.cms The death of several devotees at a stampede at the Pushkar Ghat on the banks of the Godavari on the first day of the Pushkara earlier this week has left everyone shocked. There are two aspects to the disaster; (a) the failure of the administration to manage the crowds and (b) the way the crowd itself behaved leading up to the stampede. There is enough being said on how the administration did not anticipate the numbers of devotees, how standard crowd control systems were ignored and the role of VVIPs in this fiasco. It is never politically correct to speak ill of the victims but it is quite clear that the mindless surge of humanity intent on being at the precise place at the most auspicious time contributed to the tragedy. Is timing everything? Relevant to this issue is our belief in the notion of “most auspicious” moment. It is difficult to ...

Vizag’s dirty secret Nallah nostalgia Storm water drains form naturally over time when rain water runs-off the land towards slopes. We also call them “nallahs” or “geddas”. Vizag has hillocks on three sides and a sea on one side. It is natural that all the rain water to gush quite quickly down the slopes and into the sea. Along the way the storm water gathered in some of the low lying areas forming natural reservoirs before making its way to the sea. Vizag always had an excellent natural storm water drainage system. A survey of India map of Vizag in 1929 shows that we had 31 km of storm water drains within the smaller Vizag at that time and 300 acres of water bodies that these storm water drains drained into. Fascinating ecosystem This system of natural storm water drains was an ecological wonderland. Tall grass grew all along the nallahs and played host to myriad creatures. At the bottom of the food chain were the worms, grasshoppers, mantis, tadpoles, frogs, snai...