Chaos, poor safety mar Avarebele Mela

Moved from V V Puram food street to National College Grounds, the annual bean food festival was a mess this year

Avarebele Mela, the popular annual bean food festival, failed on many fronts this year.

Food was seen uncovered
at many stalls.

Held from January 6 to 9 at the National College Grounds, the mela was marked by poor management.

Held on V V Puram food street in the past, it would attract about 10,000 people every day. This year, the daily turnout was about 70,000.

People didn’t know where they could buy coupons, the food was kept in open utensils, and the lights weren’t switched on till 8 pm one day, a visitor complained. That meant people had to stumble their way through the darkness.

There weren’t enough dustbins and that led to littering all around. “People had to walk through a pile of garbage,” a visitor told Metrolife.

Shiny Alexander, resident of Padmanabha Nagar, echoed his observations. “They could have hired a bigger space,” she said. It was challenging for elderly people to navigate the crowds, as there was no crowd direction or management.

Shiny overheard an elderly person saying he “almost fell into an open fire, as the crowd was trying to get close to the food counter”. Safety was overlooked.

The entry and the exit were at the same point, and that led to jostling, said citizen activist Leo Saldanha, who visited the mela on Sunday. “It looked like there would be a stampede,” he said.

Saldanha had to leave the place without eating anything. “If these problems are not resolved, citizens will lose interest in attending such food festivals,” he said.