Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere (Retd),President, Mysore Grahakara Parishat writes
Mysore City Corporation is in the middle of a footpath clearance operation. Roadside vendors seem to be the main targets of this eviction.
Clearing the roads and footpaths for smoother pedestrian and vehicular movement is the stated goal of the MCC operation.
But roadside vendors are just one cause of the clogging of pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Other major causes are:
2. The number of vehicles on the roads is increasing rapidly. This is due to increasing incomes, the policy of the government to promote vehicles and the policy of banks to encourage purchase of motor vehicles.
3. Easily affordable, convenient (and yet at the same time profitable) public transportation systems can be run. But the state government does not seem interested. It seems interested only in expensive, and in many cases, uneconomical public transport such as monorail, underground suburban trains and imported luxury buses. Provision of good public transportation is also ignored in the planning of new layouts. Lack of convenient and affordable public transportation is leading to increased reliance on private vehicles and increased load on the roads..
4. The policy of local authorities to keep on widening roads to accommodate the fast increasing private vehicle population has become self-defeating since footpaths are being sacrificed for road widening and so pedestrians are forced to walk on roads, and thereby obstructing vehicular traffic.
To unclog the roads and footpaths of Mysore, all these problems have to be tackled simultaneously. Otherwise the objective will not be realized.
MCC seems to have focused only on roadside vendors and ignored the the other three problems. In its eagerness to remove roadside vendors, it seems to have also ignored the negative fallout of such eviction. By the removal of roadside vendors, thousands of people will lose their livelihoods, and most of the citizens of Mysore will lose affordable merchandise and food.