My home is on the intersection of a very busy main road (N. S. Phadke Marg). The lane which connects our society to the main road is often desolate and most of the year it lies in neglect. However, whenever you have a social festival such as Ganesha, Dahi Handi, Holi, etc, then this lane gets decorated and pandals are setup to give a different and lively look to the road.
Every year for Ganesh Chaturthi, we would have a pandal setup near the intersection and this would lead to a throng of visitors … good for the community, but irritating for the drivers trying to turn into the lane from the busy traffic signal. This year, there were two pandals instead of one. I decided to enquire about this, why would a community divide their resources for two different celebrations?
The Two Parties
Turns out that the local MLA of this area is a Shiv Sainik and was putting that over all the available hoardings during the festival. To match this the local Congress representative had his cronies setup another pandal with the Congress banners. Boom, you now have two pandals in a narrow lane.
I have not seen any of their decorations, however I am sure that there would be strong competition within both of them to outshine the other.
Interestingly, this has helped the local community instead of cause friction between the two parties. More people are involved in the local festivals, there is a constant presence of Police these days which reduces the traffic jams (although many would disagree on this point!).
So, what?
I see a lot of government resources being put to use. But atleast its not filling the pockets of corrupt people. The co-operation and co-ordination shown during this event is quite good to see … why cant this be done across the nation? At least that way we can stop this Congress, Anti-Congress … Modi, Anti-Modi … BJP, Anti-BJP.