VIZAG matters - Sohan Hatangadi's Blog

This should be a good time for our head-in- the-clouds tourism officials to get Back to Basics. Let us learn from the recent HOT AIR BALLOON FESTIVAL at Araku. Rs. 5,00,00,000 spent on damp squib balloon festival. Who benefited? A few reporters, some officials, the event organizers and their friends and family and a few of those who sucked up to appropriate persons in the political hierarchy in Vijayawada. We did not even sell Vizag to the foreign balloon crew. They had no idea about what Vizag or Araku was all about. What about tourists? We got perhaps less than a hundred real extra tourists on one day at ARAKU! So what was the cost of acquisition per tourist? You work it out! Remember the tamasha about Heli-Tourism? There was so much hullabaloo about it, lots of our money spent but within a month it has gone phut! Buddhist tourism all talk no action With fanfare and trumpetry two "interpretation centers" were built at Thotlakonda and Bavikonda a...

Yesterday, on the way back from Lepakshi, in the outskirts of Hindupur in Anantapur District,  Jayshree Hatangadi  and I chanced upon some silk farms. There were large sheds with beds of wooden trays in which the worms were reared for around 3 weeks and fed mulberry leaves. After which they were transferred to another shed where they were harvested. Later they were shifted to the the auction house and sold. The rates for yellow less dense cocoons is between Rs.350 to Rs. 400  per kg. The denser white cocoon is sold between Rs. 500 and Rs. 600 per kg. Then they went through further processing. We were surprised to learn that a single cocoon could yield around one kilometer of filament! They are spun into yarns, dyed in brilliant colours and sold in reels to weaving factories where they produce the gorgeous silk sarees. One weaving unit can produce three sarees a day and the more complicated Jacquard ones take a whole day to produce. The w...

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 !

How do the Indian Railways #IRCTC ensure that senior citizens always land up in UPPER berths?  Is there a complex set of algorithm that are at work to s***w the elderly? Is there a bunch of evil programmers waiting for old farts like us to book tickets just to enjoy seeing us huff and puff to get to the upper berths? The funny thing is that the earlier you book the more the chance of you getting an upper berth! Then you see a dapper young chap waltzing in and taking the lower berth! Not only that, he boasts that he booked a ticket only a days ago. #Railway #minister are you hearing? Is there a built in bias against the elderly? Is there a hidden policy saying "these buddas get discounts in the railways so let's s***w them by giving them upper berths."

The only city that doesn't have a visible sign showing the turn to the airport. Is that because we are a smart city?

 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.

The proposed construction of a new Rs. 700 crore convention centre at the APIIC grounds opposite Harbour Park near RK beach has set alarm bells ringing for many Vizagites. Especially, for those living in the vicinity. It is true that Vizag does not have a large conference Center and adequate rooms to host a large conference.  Any city that  aspires to be a MICE destination must have adequate purpose-built space for hosting large events. So when the space became available near the beach it was natural for the government to grab the opportunity to build it here. But it seems to be a grave mistake. The proposal is for this 14 acre land is to have 5,000 seat conference halls, 200 room hotel, multiplex theaters and a shopping mall.  There are only two roads to access the complex.  The harbor park road on the West and the Beach road on the East. There is one small unused narrow road adjacent to the Pandurangaswamy temple. The beach road is narrow and crow...

Our Town Hall in VIZAG, India was built in 1904 and has witnessed the high points of Vizag's social, cultural and literary events. During India's freedom movement our town hall has played a central role in hosting important meetings. Today it lies in dilapidated condition. Thankfully our Greater Visakha Municipal Corporation (GVMC) has taken the first baby steps in preventing further deterioration by cancelling the lease of the  premises to a person who was renting it for weddings. It had become a filthy and stinking hell hole. Now it is not dirty inside but it is in a rundown condition. Our corporation has good intentions to revive it but as in several cases intent and implementation is miles apart. Despite many assurances from our Corporation, the town hall continues to be a neglected monument of Vizag's illustrious past. No one knows why it is not being done. No will? No management skills? No money? We have money to blow up on transient events on the beac...

Everyone wants"beach tourism". Yet there is no way we can protect our beaches from trash. This year the UNWTO theme worldwide was "Sustainable Tourism - a tool for development". Yet despite so many reminders to our tourism department that this was an important time to work on sustainability, there was complete disinterest from officials and from the industry. We went about doing the usual masala song and dance events on our beaches. Any responsible tourism department interested in the long term sustainable development of the industry would have seized the opportunity to prepare a strong policy on cleaning up and maintaining our tourist spots including those inland and in our ghats. Now we are "developing" Yerada and other spots asking our beach. GOD HELP US!

This marketing effort would be termed "excellent" if it was done by the coffee board. But for tourism it is totally irrelevant and a waste of money. That is because Araku is already bursting at the seams with low to medium spending tourists. The roads are crowded, chaotic and  filthy. Mountains of organic and plastic  garbage are strewn everywhere. Lines of squatting children do their job on the road sides. So much for ODF! There are no public toilets and what little is available is sub Saharan standards. In the roads surrounding Araku we come across heaps of Plaster of Paris and plastic sheeting removed from some old film set. Thermocole packing material and styrofoam plates lie in the fields everywhere. In the absence of any organised solid waste management every hotel and lodge takes their garbage across the road and chucks it into the bushes. Other than the APTDC property all lodges have poor standards. The RTC bus stand is one of the worst anywhere with ha...

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!

Good time to extract our heads from the clouds and get back to basics.  Five crores spent on Balloon festival, net result? Perhaps a hundred real extra tourists on one day at ARAKU!  Cost per tourist?  You work it out. Five crores divided by 6 lakhs earning citizens of Vizag. How much did each of us contribute through our tax money for that balloon Fest? You work it out! Big noise about heli-tourism now gone phut! Interpretation centres - Rs. 1.5 crores each already spent on Thotlakonda and Bavikonda  in 2015- 2016, lying incomplete and unused for 2 years! How much loss of interest in non usable assetd? Our money squandered. Which official is responsible for this? Meanwhile no functional loos at any of our premium Buddhist sites Thotlakonda and Bavikonda! An apology of a loo at Bojjanakonda. ARAKU is a rubbish dump, road sides full of defecation, tons of garbage and plastic everywhere. The dirtiest of eastern ghat towns! Time now for govt to ...

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...

Our local events make sure that the performers and the audience are kept well apart. VVIPs and VIPs occupy the entire space near the stage. Performers hate this, they cannot connect with the audience. The crowds hate this because they cannot communicate their appreciation to the performers. The VVIPs are busy folk and often do not turn up keeping the front white sofas and seats vacant. It is disheartening to see excellent performances not getting audience response because they are simply too far away. This my friends has been going on for a long long time. It is surprising that those professional event managers who are paid tons of money to deliver a good show just toe the government line and keep following this old established official political format. We understand that security is an issue when VVIPs are there. That is why we should not mix business with pleasure when it comes to events. Now Visakha Utsav is around the corner, crores of our tax money will be spent on...