Obstacle on Road - Steet Vendor, Illegal construction by Retail Shops

What do you imagine? If I say you a word 'Market'. A crowded, noisy street with people. All commercial activities done to buy and sell goods at the competitive prices. Obstacle on the road for traffic, Markets on the street are not designed, they are self created at a convenient location by the local sellers and buyers.

Unlicensed street vendors are all over the city these days. Presumably, a bunch of raggedy looking people hawking fruits, vegetables, clothes, and food. People prefer to buy from them because of the cheaper prices, though the products have no warranty or guarantee. At pick hour time, in the evening chaos can be seen on the street, and people walk on the road since they have no room left to walk on the pavement. Slowly moving traffic seems to be dangerous as the traffic move close to the walkers. With the little money, one can start this street vendor business, as the hawker don't have to rent or buy property to do the business.

Periodically, police gets tough and clear the path, in case of police gets complaints about them. But the street vendors are united bunch and will resist for their survival and may shift to another street. Authorities provides the space to evacuate the hawkers from the street, but eventually new vendors come back on the street. Actually the vested interest of cops, Municipality authorities and some unsocial elements (bhai) keep them always on the street. Personally, I like having the vendors on the corner. It makes the walk a bit of an obstacle course, but cheap fruit and a snack (Pani-Puri) is never far away.

Have you ever observed, why does retail shop keeper extend their shops on foot-path? They keep certain product and sign board of their shop outside their shop. Probably, they think that's way to attract customers from their competitors and don't realise that in fact, their shops looks ugly. Sometimes retails construct their shops illegally to stay ahead of all the other shops, trying look in front to attract the customers. These way actually they creating more trouble on street for traffic jams.

Tibetan / Nepalese are the best examples of street vendors, but they come in the city with Authorities permission, get the rented space from Municipality and do their business. It is also disbelief that street hawkers are cheaper, clothes, fruits, vegetable can be bought cheaper from the stores. Never buy stuff from the store, who is expanding his business in public land and let him inform about that.

Obstacle on Road - Illegally Constructed Religious Place - Temples , Mosque

Take an example of any Indian city, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Calcutta, Delhi, Hyderabad, Banglor, illegal constructed worship places like mosques, temples, gurudwara and churches are the issue for all the cities. The 2001 Census of India threw up the astonishing statistic that there were 2.4 million places of worship in the country and schools at 2.1 million. India is a country where religion has been and is being misused the most.


The illegal construction comes up with small temple at the beginning and grow up gradually time to time and start building sheds and shops around temples. Sometimes to protect illegal construction from local authorities and government, temples are made on the way of illegal construction, so that in name of religious sentiments no illegal construction can be removed. Devotees make big crowd on road to worship god and never care for traffic jam.

These all worship places are means of income for the local criminal elements and they capture the public land. Have you ever thought, how difficult it is, if you want to make any illegal house or shop. But for these people it is a easy job to break into Indian system and construct the illegal businesses.

The citizens must support the local body and co-operate to ensure that no public land is used for construction of religious places. It is very disturbing that political parties instead of taking correct position on this issue make the whole issue connected to a communal tensions for their personal benefits. Our country must be ready to accept that the faith can not be at the cost of public disturbance. This places come across the side of the road or the middle of road creating inconvenience in traffic. The local body must ensure that there are no further construction of religious places on public property. The best ways to stop these illegal construction :

• Action against the pujaris / Bhais / Imams / Head of the Church, etc. builders / managers / trustees of such places of worship, for unauthorised constructions.
• Disconnect supply of water/ electricity.
• Issue legal notice for occupying space for citizens.
• Take disciplinary action against officials for allowing such places of worship illegally, unauthorised.
• Prevent extensions of existing places by taking measurements/photographs.
  

Garbage and Dust in the Air

Garbage is a Waste, unwanted material by human being. Not just city But also small towns, highways and tourist places are dumpers of garbage. on Pathways there are lots of piece of papers (used as packing material ) and the plastic was wrappers of packed chips and tobacco packing material (Gutka) can be seen every where around the path ways, on the side ways of highways and the every corner of city.

The waste in the city is mostly paper, plastic, construction material, wasted food. With the increased in standard of living and conscious about health has pushed the people to make the city clean. City's most unwanted garbage collected from homes and offices are dumped to proper places by city's authorities. Only during the non picking days of garbage are bad. Now ever garbage is such a huge that legal dumping is harmful when it is done without taking care of the environment. Near big towns there are large places where garbage is brought in open trucks and tractors. They pollute the whole area and some people were searching for saleable and reusable things for themselves.


When its windy in the city lots of plastic bags fly in the air. Municipalities never make the footpath and roads dust free, the unskilled cheap labourer never mind to make the it nicely and the name of development digging people comes and they make the road patchy with dust and every time traffic moves along roads, it stirs up dust from the road and pavement and re-suspends dust in the air. That becomes a problem for two wheeler drivers since they are not using helmet dust stuck with their eyes and hair.


The dust we see everyday on our car and on our furniture in our house is result of moving traffic and winds that brings the dust inside our houses. Why not road and foot path are not just clean that we can walk with our shoes on the road as well as in home and temples.