Dancers mock the sorry state of city footpaths

Malleswaram Social, a citizen group of the area, has come up with a video to create awareness about the poor footpaths in the area.

Two dancers from the area performed Bharatanatyam that combined satire with art mocking civic agencies.

The video titled “Bharatnatyam-an essential skill on Malleswaram footpaths”, is going viral on social media with the hashtag, #footpathbeku (“We want a footpath”).

Preeti Sunderajan and Sowmya Thanthri, both Bharatanatyam dancers, along with Malleswaram Social members, created the video recently.

According to Dhanush N, a member of the group: “We have complained several times to the authorities about the bad condition of the footpath in Malleswaram. Three months ago we thought to create a unique awareness campaign to reach out the citizens. This video is part of this campaign.”

“We are also planning to come up with similar videos on various other civic issues soon as we feel this to be more effective medium,” he added.

Malleswaram Social has done a couple of signature drives to educate people about the #FootpathBeku campaign.

Suchitra Srinivasan Deep, the co-founder of the platform, said: “footpaths are the basic necessities for any city. Our footpaths are badly designed, poorly maintained and encroached upon. But none of these seems to really worry the citizens. We have the right to ask footpath and maintain them. The administration is not the only stakeholder to be blamed for this. All of us are responsible in some way or other.”

“Hence we have to create awareness among the citizens for the walkable footpath. We hope this campaign will take us together to get a pedestrian-friendly footpath in our area,” she added.