This picture (below) is about one more traffic jam courtesy a rally organised at the peak hour of 9 AM on 21st Nov 08. This time the jam near High Grounds police station junction was due to the rally of school children who were participating in Chinnara Habba.

A good-samaritan acts, in vain. Pic: author.

This incident happened immediately a day after the political rally of JD(S) in which citizens were subjected to a horrendous time.

I am not against children’s rallies but it could have been held at non-peak hours. The school administrators, event organisers and the public adminstrators who give permission to such rallies are so insensitive to civic issues.

The rally blocked the traffic for almost 30 minutes causing inconvenience to a lot of office goers. Besides, as this road leads to the Internatioanal Airport any such traffic jam will result in total chaos because of the number of vehicles that pass through the road.

Since my vehicle was stranded on the road for quite some time I walked to the traffic police and requested him to stop the rally for ten minutes and let the traffic move on for some time, so that there would be some let up in the traffic build up. In vain. The police, who just follow instructions from top authorities, were just doing their job. They could do nothing except make the public wait till the rally passed.

It’s a shame on the school authorities for not understanding these kind of sensitive issues. In the first place, police should not give permission for any rallies to be held during peak hours. Secondly the police should act depending upon the situation and not follow the instructions blindly. It is always the public who are held to ransom.

But alas, the public either remains a mute spectator or curses the administrators, but does nothing else to remedy the situation. I appeal to the citizens of Bangalore to be proactive and lodge their protest against such situations with the public and government bodies. ⊕