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| Giant anaconda in the busy Yeshwantapur market area of Bangalore on Sunday. Twitter pic |
Staff Correspondent, August 10, 2015, NewsCrunch
Namma Bengaluru Foundation (NBF), a Bangalore-based civil society organization working for improving the city, released a giant anaconda in the busy Yeshwantapur market area on Sunday.
The massive reptile with cruel eyes and frightening teeth, with a bloody human hand jutting out of its jaw, seemingly coming out of a large pool of water, actually a huge pothole, was in fact an art that NBF commissioned.
NBF told The News Minute that this was an attempt to embarrass the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to take the city road and drainage conditions seriously and trigger action.
The anaconda was created by Chitrakala Parishad graduate Pushparaj over two days.
It was only two months ago that another Bangalore artist, Nanjundaswamy, had let loose a life-size crocodile weighing 20 kgs in another 12-feet long city pothole, with the same objective.
Nanjundaswamy had previously drawn inspiration from Lord Yama himself, crafting Yama's mouth around an open manhole to showcase the danger it represented to citizens.
It has been reported that Bangalore has more than 2000 potholes in 422 of its main roads.
Politicians as well as BBMP officials have publicly set deadlines guaranteeing people that they'd repair all potholes.
While Home Minister K J George had set aside 45 days for this, BBMP Commissioner had estimated that over five months, by February 2014, all arterial and sub-arterial roads of Bangalore would be free of potholes.
The protests by the artists and civil society organizations indicate that the promises haven't been kept.
While artists like Nanjundaswamy have had some success in catalyzing action from BBMP, other citizens are often left on their own.
Numerous examples exist of people pooling in their own money and labour to repair their pothole-ridden roads in Bangalore.