VIZAG matters - Sohan Hatangadi's Blog

My friend the Navy TOI dated 31 January 2016 Those who lived in the old town of Vizag in the 1950s to 1970s had an emotional link to the Navy. Many of us lived on or very near the beach road of the old town long before the entire beach front was taken up by the Outer Harbour project. From our sea facing balcony we would see the naval vessels steam in and out of the harbour and watching those grey vessels against our blue seas was a treat. Those who studied in St. Aloysius would be drawn away from the teacher and blackboard to gaze at these wonderful vessels bristling with guns. Where were they coming from, where were they going? What were the navy men doing on board? Our fertile minds created an aura around these men in white. We dreamt of lands far away and the life in the navy. Many youngsters wanted to make a career in the navy when they grew up. The navy had a profound impression on our young minds. Of fishing and navy ship watching During the long summer vacatio...

Tackling Vizag’s traffic woes Times of India dated 17 January 2016 One of the most dramatic changes that have taken place in Vizag is the numbers of vehicles that are used on our streets. Not only have the numbers increased but also the different types and makes of vehicles. When today’s old timers were in college very few households had bikes or cars. The four-wheelers we would see on the streets were the ugly Ambassador, the plain looking Fiat Premier Padmini and an occasional Mahindra Jeep all which started manufacture in the 1940’s and slowly made its way all over our country. Two-wheelers on the streets were the Vespa, Lambretta, Bullet, Jawa and Rajdoot. In the 1970s you could sit opposite where the RTC Bus Stand is now and would see perhaps 20 private vehicles in an hour of street gazing. Chaos on our roads Then in the late 1990s the automotive industry was released from the shackles of the license Raj and suddenly the action on the street changed. By the year 200...

Senior volunteers wanted My article in the Times of India Dated 3 January 2016 In a vast country like India there is always plenty of work to be done. There are farms to be maintained, water to be provided for agriculture and for homes, power to be generated and distributed, children to be educated, people and things to be moved every day, newspapers to be printed, babies to be made and delivered, the sick to be attended, financial services to be provided, politicians to be elected and Arnab has to shout for a couple of hours every night on TV. Plenty of work We have work to do because, we are 1.3 billion of us on a land mass of 2,973,193 square kilometers. We are in dirty crowded villages and teeming dirty crowded cities. We have a humongous 179.6 million folks below the poverty line in our ancient country and that my friend is 20.6% of planet earths poorest. One in four Indians are completely illiterate and Government schools with their “pass-them-anyhow” policy a...

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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...