Come monsoon, children brush up their paper boat-making skills, setting sail their miniatures into puddles. But on Sunday, it wasn’t children, who were playing in the rain, but a BJP member in Hyderabad, who was using paper boats to register his protest.
Fed up with Serilingampally corporator’s inaction to drain out the water that had been inundating the Papireddy Colony in Hyderabad, a BJP leader, Raju Shetty decided to come up with a unique protest.
Raju Shetty along with others from the area set sail paper boats in the stagnant water under the railway culvert. The video of this protest that was published on Facebook caught the eye of several netizens, who applauded his effort to address the yearly monsoon problem.
Speaking to TNM, Raju says, “Every year, motorists suffer the same problem. Whenever we raise the issue they deploy water drainers and pump out the water, but this year, they did not do that. The GHMC monsoon team did not come to our area yet. Because of the accumulated dirty water, motorists are avoiding this particular stretch. This is also contributing to the mosquito menace.”
Raju adds that the corporator and the GHMC should reconstruct the road scientifically so that the water doesn’t accumulate in the future. “The problem is that the road is poorly constructed, as a result there is waterlogging under the railway bridge. The road should be reconstructed scientifically to put an end to this yearly monsoon trouble that commuters have to go through.”
The BJP member also said that he would continue such bizarre protests to highlight the problems of the public, while shaming the corporator for allegedly not doing his job.
“Next week we will be arranging a ‘Spain bull’ game. The roads are in a miserable state—ridden with potholes and slush. So, I am arranging a few people and we will play in the slush. We will click photos and share them on social media. We will demand the authorities and the corporator to maintain the roads in the same state which will serve the purpose for our playing. The conditions of the roads are really pathetic. Through such innovative campaigns we want to shame our inefficient corporator.”
When asked how he came up with the idea of using paper boats to bring the issue to the fore, he laughs and says, “If you see the water accumulated, even you feel like setting sail paper boats. They don’t even look like roads.”
Despite his unique protest, however, the railway culvert continues to be inundated with water, with neither the GHMC nor the corporator paying any heed to the paper boats.