Kids standing up for themselves tell ‘how poor urban governance is’

Children, who were stuck for hours in traffic bottlenecks, held a candlelight protest to draw the attention of authorities concerned

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Children who were stuck in Balagere Panathur Road traffic for about two hours and 30 minutes resulting in them not being able to attend their school, held a candlelight protest on Wednesday evening.

“We have faced a lot, our kids have faced a lot. We request the government to pay attention and do the needful,” said one of the parents, Sangappa Desai, in a video which has been making rounds on social media. The video has also captured children holding lit candles saying, “We need safer roads in the future” and “the traffic at Balagere must reduce.”

Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) within the vicinity claim that the issue has been long-standing and also affects office goers. School buses are stuck for at least a span of 90 minutes each day. Namma Balagere, a forum of citizens from the Varthur ward said, “This area is just two kilometers away from the Outer Ring Road.

We have made a number of requests but they have fallen on deaf ears,” and requested the authorities to fasten the work. “Narendra Modi ji, visit us when you will be in Bengaluru,” they added. Work of widening the rail under bridge (RUB) with two new vents in Panathur, near the Bellandur Road railway station is the cause for all the traffic.

Panathur is a key link that connects Kadubeesanahalli on the Outer Ring Road (ORR) and Varthur. However, the narrow underpass below the Hosur railway line has turned into a nightmare for motorists on the route, especially during the peak hours.

“Do the authorities even care? Citizens will have to keep shaming them into action,” retweeted Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, founder of Biocon Limited. Tara Krishnaswamy, cofounder of Citizens for Bengaluru, said, “Children in protests are decades, perhaps hundreds of years old, from the times of Rani Lakshmi Bai but that’s being stood up by parents due to compulsions or exposure.

Children standing up for themselves is telling of how poor urban governance in Bengaluru is - it fails children, it fails us all.”