THE growth-pangs of the city of Nagpur are visible everywhere -- new buildings, new roads, new bridges, new malls, new markets and on footpaths. The people find countless kilometers of footpaths having been encroached upon by people for different reasons -- some shameless and some helpless. First the helpless ones -- so to say: People take their two wheelers straight onto the footpaths for parking for the day. The city of Nagpur hundreds of such sights where long lines of two-wheelers having been parked on the footpaths -- with nobody to question, nobody to take action. And even if the cops decide to take action, the people cannot do a damn about it since there is no option. For, there is no place and space along many, many roads to park any vehicle even for a minute. So, out of sheer helplessness, people decide to flout the law and occupy footpaths for parking of their two wheelers.

 

Now the shameless ones -- so to say: At countless places, footpaths are encroached upon by people constructing buildings for whatever use. Invariably, the footpaths along those sites are used for dumping mountains of construction materials such as huge iron girders or tonnes of long iron roads or tonnes of timber or truck-loads of sand and other materials useful in the construction activity. True, the builders do erect tall temporary fences of coloured metal sheets around the plots, all right. But outside those, they dump different materials needed for construction. Naturally, such encroachment on footpaths causes much trouble to the road-using public whose members must then walk on the main carriage-way. Unfortunately, the authorities seem to do little in this regard. When the loosefooter expressed his discomfiture about this openly to a group of people, one of them said in a disgusted tone, “What can we do Sir? These builders have their say everywhere. So, if you are a wise fellow, then keep shut on this. For, your shouting would prove nothing, and serve nothing.”

 

Another aspect of shameless encroachment of footpaths is as regards of commerce that thrives there in different parts of the city. In that activity, different merchandises are displayed on footpaths and sold to buyers who park their scooters and cars just there on the roads and engage in noisy bargains for happy pricings etc. Cops pass by, but say or do nothing -- as is common knowledge. Of course, on some rare occasion, the anti-encroachment squad of the civic authority wakes up and removes these commercial encroachers.For a day or two, those patches of footpaths look cleared and clean. Invariably on the third day, they appear again, smiling, openly indulging in commerce with patronage of the buying public. Not just the loosefooter but others also see all this, feel sorry -- and helpless !