VIZAG matters - Sohan Hatangadi's Blog

Click here The Old New Years, Times of India Yep, it is New Year time again. Our beautiful planet has traveled 947 million kilometers around the sun since the same time last year. Some of us have had amazing years and some are looking forward to forget 2015 and get on with 2016. Some of us have seen a few New Year eves and some have seen plenty. Whatever may be the case each of us has a special place for this part of the year. As we transit from “ho-ho-ho” to “Happy New Year” we experience a sort of déjà vu, that strange feeling that we have been through all this before. While New Year Eve has been now commercialized beyond recognition it was not always this way. Come let us travel to the “old new years”. The way it was The popular culture of Vizag was quite different in the 60’s and 70’s. Several companies, organisations and institutions from other parts of India and abroad set up shop in our town and Vizag developed a vibrant cosmopolitan culture. Much of it was driven b...

The art of torturing audiences I n the cooler months of the year a number of meetings, seminars and workshops are held in the city. Subjects ranging from Architecture to Zoology, from spiritual to spirits, from mundane to magnificent are all discussed in conference rooms and meeting halls by the erudite citizens of our learned city and by visitors from afar. Engineers, doctors, lawyers, managers, accountants, scientists, all meet to share their thoughts and expound their views. Some of these meetings are in closed group of invitees or paid seminars while others are open to public. Some seminars are held in the best hotels of Vizag while others are held in moderately priced venues. Different folks, different reasons Many Vizagites love to attend such events and they do so for different reasons. Some attend to garner knowledge and become wiser. Others, generally elderly men attend so that they may take a nap in the back seat of an air-conditioned hall. It is said that some...

Most of Vizag’s older residents lived in what we called “One Town” because the pin code for that area was simply “1”. While most parts of the old town were densely packed it also had several gracious old buildings like the recruiting office and officer’s accommodation that stood under the shade of massive banyan trees. The trees spread like an aerial city with sturdy roots supporting stout branches for hundreds of feet in all directions. Soldierpeta As the area was home to British soldiers it was also called “Soldierpeta”. In the 1960s and 70s when the port expanded its operations, coal and iron ore dust spread like a cancer over that part of town. Nice big structures were razed to the ground and slum like quarters sprang up everywhere. No one bothered about aesthetics and elegance; someone just pointed at the ground and simply said “build here” and that was it. Consequently from being the pulsating heart of Vizag it went to a scar that no one bothered to heal. The charac...

Day of dread We have been dreading this day since the last ten years. We finally got the notice today. It said simply “By the powers vested in me by the Girijan Government Land Acquisition Authority, you are hereby directed to vacate your house within 30 days of this notice and hand over your home and land to the representative of the Draconian Girijan Governor”. The small print went on to give details of the meager compensation that would be paid and the office we should contact for assistance in relocation and rehabilitation. We have lived in Pandurangapuram for half a century and this has come as a shock. My friends in MVP colony, Kirlmpudi, Daspalla Hills have all got similar notices. Not suitable for homes The past few decades have seen rampant mining of our hills and also massive acquisition of lands for industry in the foothills and rural areas. Land for growing food has become scarce. Much of the food is imported. Industrialists and big business have managed to dilu...

Vizag’s word of the year is “Smart”! Ever since the US offered to develop Vizag as a smart city along with Ajmer and Allahabad the word “Smart” has permeated every Vizagite’s conscience. All you have to do to charge up a dull party is ask loudly “what exactly is this Smart city everyone is talking about?” Once that question is injected into the conversation a riot follows. The mild and polite conversation suddenly becomes animated and opinionated.  Interpretation of what a “Smart City” means flies around like a bug in a can creating quite a buzz. In the end the wise man in the corner, nursing his drink, says that it simply means that the citizens of the city should be “happy”. Then, suddenly, exhausted by the arguments, everyone calms down and becomes happy. Smartness is the answer If we go by the Webster dictionary meaning the word “smart” is defined as (a) “very good at learning or thinking about things “, (b) showing intelligence or good judgment”, (c) “behaving or ta...

Last month our Chief Minister announced that Andhra Pradesh would achieve 100% literacy by the year 2020. This is an important objective, because our state has not been doing well on the literacy front. Here are some sobering figures. The national average literacy rate is 74%. The southern states, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have literacy rate of 93.91%, 75.6% and 80.33 respectively. In comparison the literacy rate in Andhra Pradesh is a mere 67.41% and in Telengana it is 66.5%.    Educational infrastructure is improving The primary schools in our Agency Areas such as Araku, Paderu and Chintapalli are run by the Integrated Tribal Development Authority (ITDA) based in Paderu. Over the past many years the government has been injecting substantial financial resources into the area to build up infrastructure such as school buildings, roads, health, electricity and water supply.  Even though we have the physical infrastructure in place we are unable to deliver q...

The United Nations World Tourism Organization  (UNWTO) has declared 27 th September as World Tourism Day. The day serves to remind us that in this modern world, tourism is one of the most important human activities by way of numbers of persons employed and revenue generated. Every year countries throughout the world celebrate this day with great fanfare and rededicate themselves to improving their tourism industry. The theme for this year is “1 Billion Tourists, 1 Billion Opportunities” . 1,000,000,000 international tourists Now, keep your calculator, pencil and paper handy … we are entering number land. In 2012 for the first time a billion people packed their bags and went travelling internationally.  Take a moment to understand this number. One billion is equal to a 1,000 million, or 100 Crores. This is 20 times the population of divided Andhra Pradesh and around 80% of our nation’s population. With a world population now a shade over 7 billion people this mean...

To read the article as it appeared in the Times of India, please click on this link Cultural genocide in our hills or read the original word document below Our children speak the language and imbibe the culture that we (and our living room flat TV) pass on to them, the same language and culture that we imbibed from our parents and grandparents. Along with language, each generation passes on knowledge of music, songs, folklore, traditions, religious practices and cuisine generation to generation and are kept alive for posterity. Cultural genocide at our doorstep We take this historical passing on of the cultural baton as a matter of routine. No one really gives it much thought. But imagine if our children were taken away from us at a young age of 8 or 9 and injected into a completely different environment where they get insulated from their parents, elders and their original way of life. If they were removed from the tapestry of their original culture and weaved into an al...