VIZAG matters - Sohan Hatangadi's Blog

In 2014, a group of heritage enthusiasts, visiting Bavikonda stumbled upon a fenced piece of  land near the ancient Buddhist Monuments. Ever since the question as to who owns the land and how they came to possess such a land next to a protected 3rd Century BC heritage site has puzzled many. Questions were asked of local administration but no answers have come in the last four years. This video highlights the story in 2 minutes.

Powered by hydraulic pressure due to copious rains in a short period on 1st and 3rd May, massive quantities of plastics has come down from the geddas and landed at our beaches. Some 20% of it will have reached the sea waters by now and half of that may be pushed back ashore over a series of high tides. Certainly a large portion will remain in the sea destroying our marine life. Tactically now will be the best time to remove as much plastics as possibl e from the gedda-beach-sea ecosystem. We can turn this disaster into an opportunity by grabbing and removing as much of this rubbish as possible. The red mud that washed towards the beach can be handled later, it would be better to put all of GVMC's resources into capturing the plastics when we can and take them out of the system. WE MUST ACT URGENTLY.

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...

We are the world champions in destroying our natural assets. Please see attached news items "Burning trash is turning off visitors at city's famous Rushikonda beach" Times of India dated 23rd Apr 2018 and Centre purposes relaxation of CRZ norms" The Hindu dated 19 Apr 2018 ............................... Now with a move to dilute the CRZ regulations, apparently to appease the tourism lobby (see attached news report) we are walking into trouble with our eyes wide open. Look what has happened to our once pristine *Rushikonda*. We unleashed our tourism department on the beach - no doubt with good intentions - and ruined it overnight. Everywhere the tourism department goes the place gets filthy and in no time has lost its charm. We see foreign travel shows on TV and think that we can replicate the scene here as if it all happens automatically by magic. We do not understand that after the infrastructure is set up , after the overpaid ...

Important people say the most clichéd banal things and everyone nods wisely and pretend that it is all original wisdom. Can someone please tell them that we have been hearing the same tired ideas for decades? Can someone please point out that it is time to stop talking and start getting things done? The best meeting will be when officials leave the conference room and go to a tourism site and get it ready for real tourists. Get local ... get real ... get things done

VUDA'S BUDGET for this year appeared in the media last week. So many crores being spent on future projects. Not even small change for our valuable heritage buildings. Every one of our historical buildings is crumbling. For years our administration have made promises that they will take up repairs but NOTHING REALLY HAPPENS!!! Every glowing report in the papers is talking of the future. No one asks what happened to the hundreds of promises made every year. Meanwhile our histo ry becomes dust. In front of our eyes. I have dozens of stories of neglect and supreme apathy. On one hand we talk of being smart and on the other hand we are dumb enough to allow our history to vanish. WORLD HERITAGE DAY IS ON 18 APRIL 2018. This is a good time for Vizagites to raise their voices. And for our media to go beyond just reporting bulletins and ask the questions that matter. IF YOU CARE, PLEASE SHARE

PRESS NOTE 3 April 2018 ‘World Heritage Day 2018’ Photo Exhibition VISAKHA CAMERA CLUB is organizing a Heritage Photo Exhibition on the following dates: April 17th 2018 from 5 pm to 7 pm  & April 18th 2018  from 11 am to 7.30 pm at Visakha Museum Awakening an empathy for heritage, the purpose of this event is to build awareness among Vizagites about their fascinating heritage comprising ancient monuments, recent or old buildings that have heritage value, natural landscapes that are a gift of nature to our city, flora and fauna, arts and crafts, traditional utensils, things we used in our childhood, festivals, cultural traditions and practices unique to our area. Professional and amateur photographers who wish to showcase their craft are invited to share photographs in print of size 12" X 15" either in color or B&W. Due to space constraint each photographer can please share to a maximum of 5 prints. Selected photos will be displaye...

The Fly boarding demo was an amazing performance by a supremely talented man. Check out the video below folks !

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!