Our walls of shame!

A little over a year ago, several spot-fixing groups cropped up in the city with a mission to beautify the streets. Fast forward a year and most of these groups seized to exist.

One of the primary reasons most of these groups cite is lack of maintenance and how posters of various kinds are back on walls within no time. And now, with the GHMC polls nearing later this month, you can be sure to see the walls around you adorned by more such adhesive advertising. One such group now gone dark is Hyderabad Beats. Having worked on several bus stops and over 11 walls in the city, this group stopped spot-fixing once they noticed that their works were being plastered with posters — everything from business posters, political posters to advertising leaflets.

Arvind, one of the founding members of this group, states, “The efforts of the volunteers, and the locales, who had hopes to see an art filled neighbourhood were dashed.” They even went a step further in preventing and apprehending these offenders by attempting to personally catch them, however, “Our attempts to nab those who were putting up these posters also failed as they turned out to be kids doing someone else’s bidding,” he adds.

He adds that their attempts to work with the GHMC also failed as they were on a completely different tangent. “GHMC was very unsure of our intentions. They never really understood what we were trying to do. Maybe that’s why we had to end up dealing with issues like permissions. They were worried that we were taking away public property and making it our own. All this simply because we wanted to make those walls look beautiful and coordinated by a singular theme,” he informs.

The spot fixing groups in the city, Hyderabad Rising, left, and Hyderabad Beats. Many have lost volunteers and others, the battle to clean up Hyderabad
Mydhili Kosulu, a member of the now defunct group Hyderabad Rising, laments, “Within a few months of us working on them, they were filled with posters. It was heart wrenching and we lost inspiration to go on,”  she says. “It’s just impossible for us to stay at these sites and actively prevent others from littering it all the time. It has to be a collective effort from everyone including locals and the municipal bodies.”

With them, self-funding their initiatives it’s no easy task to manage their finances as well. Each spot fixing initiative costs approximately anywhere between Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000, and the volunteers dedicate at least three days to complete one project.

But now, in an attempt to redeem all this hard work, a spot fixing group called Nava Sevak, is coming up with a campaign to ban this mode of promotions. Although, like the rest of other groups, they were very well-known for their spot fixing work having done over 25 sites. Mahesh Voorugonda, an organising member, says, “We called all the numbers available on the posters to inform them of this pertinent issue. Although they said they will have it removed in a couple of days, they never really did anything about it. We are now trying to convince the government to make this an offence under law and constitutionally dish out punishment for the offenders.” The proposed campaign is being planned for on 17.
 

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