Bengaluru is rising as one. The city’s IT crowd has finally come together to protest the terrible roads and bad infrastructure which plague the metropolitan city.
M ore than 5000 techies took to the roads on Monday to voice their concerns with placards in hand. They formed human chains at important spots around the city such as Marathahalli, Kundalahalli gate, Graphite India junction and EPIC zone to make sure their voices were heard.
The public initiative wishes to tackle the civic and infrastructure woes of Whitefield and neighbouring areas in Bangalore. #SaveWhitefield ‘s demands are as simple as they come – better roads, lesser gridlocks and faster metro connectivity to downtown Bengaluru.
Here’s the current abysmal state of the city’s roads:
According to a DNA report , an accident takes place every 1.5 hours in the city . Some days, it is every hour. We kid you not. There were more than 250 accidents in 2014 on Hosur Road (Madiwala stretch to Electronic City), the highest in the city, out of which 46 were fatal. The city’s Outer Ring Road was next with 208 accidents, 48 of them fatal.
The analysis of traffic accidents in the city by the Bengaluru City Traffic Police states that there have been days when the number of vehicular accidents have gone up to 25, state a report in The Hindu .
The Silicon Valley of India is clearly losing its charm. According to a Bangalore Mirror article , IT companies in Bengaluru are losing Rs10,000 crore worth of productivity simply because of traffic issues.
Some opinions over the issue from Twitterland:
Aliens confuse Whitefield for moon, make crash landing! #SaveWhitefield @fakingnews pic.twitter.com/fSZ3HeEtkb
— Talking Pothole (@BlrPothole) November 30, 2015
. #SaveWhitefield Earlier this morning – A human chain took over Bengaluru’s streets – https://t.co/DbGDlzaR2J
— Disha Oberoi (@OberoiD) November 30, 2015
Great moment of our #SaveWhitefield campaign earlier today – traffic cop at Kundanahalli wished us success for our protest 🙂
— vineetagupta (@vineetagupta) November 30, 2015
School kids participated too! #SaveWhitefield . They suffer our bad roads too 🙁 pic.twitter.com/FiywiR0720
— Whitefield Rising (@WFRising) November 30, 2015
I’m sure a few people were not able to reach the #SaveWhitefield protest because they were stuck in terrible traffic.
— Karthik Srinivasan (@beastoftraal) November 30, 2015
#SaveWhitefield @WFRising roads in blr not found pic.twitter.com/uXbUA50u6u
— Kiran Veigas (@KiranVeigas) November 30, 2015
Here’s why Ramagondanahalli-Borewell Road is fraught with danger https://t.co/MI6KFenBoo #SaveWhitefield #Bengaluru pic.twitter.com/9rr23qJkz8
— Citizen Matters (@citizenmatters) November 30, 2015
#SaveWhitefield is out in numbers now @rk_misra @kiranshaw @wfrising @ndtv @cnn @bbc @cnnbrk #BLR @utkar7h pic.twitter.com/VYB0xKIizq
— Save Whitefield (@SaveWhitefield) November 30, 2015
Frustrated citizens take to Twitter and peaceful protests cause of government’s apathy towards poor civic infrastructure. #SaveWhitefield
— Amish Thaker (@amischthaker) November 30, 2015
The residents’ demands are legit. Crores of tax money has been collected from the IT and non-IT employees of the city. However, the government fails to provide nor maintain decent roads. How many more lives will end up in these potholes before the civic bodies finally wake up and put the taxpayers’ money to good use?