Rid cities of the billboard menace

The death of 17 persons due to the collapse of a billboard in Mumbai following a dust storm on May 13 may sound most unusual in a country where people die due to causes unheard of anywhere else.

While the catastrophe is representative of the height of civic negligence, it raises questions about allowing use of civic infrastructure for resource mobilisation for municipal bodies. In the case of the Mumbai catastrophe, three issues stand out starkly.

Firstly, the billboard was unusually large (120 ft by 120 ft). Secondly it fell on a petrol bunk where beside staff members, several cars were refuelling and a few people had taken shelter from the rain and the storm.

Thirdly, the fact that it was illegal could be known only after the mishap had claimed a huge toll of lives. This bears the testimony that authorities wake up only after negligence has fatal consequences.

Things do not move in official corridors till harm remains uninflected. It is common observation that billboards are erected where they are likely to attract more pupils rather than where they could be least interfering.

Some of the skywalks and bus shelters have been installed in cities only to raise revenue for the civic bodies from billboards that occupy them rather than being dictated by the need to facilitate public mobility.

There have been instances where advertisers have poisoned trees or lopped off branches to enhance visibility of the billboards and revenue-greedy civic bodies have positioned the skywalks—which in several cases are installed mainly to benefit the advertisers—near signals in order to catch the sight of motorists and other vehicleborne commuters.

Billboards are known to reduce, nay mar, the aesthetic appeal of cities and the outdoors and homogenise cities as they carry the same message be it in Bengaluru or Bhatinda and Delhi or Dibrugarh.

They turn a unique place to ‘anyplace’. They are responsible for visual clutter and do not allow beholders to perceive or grasp the architectural distinctiveness of cities and towns.

The billboards act like parasites on the public eye drawing their revenue from them, not from the land they stand upon. The Bengaluru civic body has recently decided to allow the billboards along the city thoroughfares.

In their new avatar, these billboards have taken a technological leap in that they are digital and carry several adverts with varying colourful images. These being distractive, constitute a traffic hazard and can prove potentially catastrophic.

Billboards are representative of commercialism gone berserk and are out to invade our senses and degrade the natural and urban landscape.

Aimed at imposing new consumer products on people, they are antithetical of the old fashioned ideals of community life, beauty, modesty and concern for nature. It is time our cities get rid of this modern menace.