Social worker rolls on the ground to highlight bad condition of road in Udupi

To highlight the bad condition of a road, social worker Nityananda Olakadu of Udupi on Tuesday, September 13 performed 'Urulu Seve' on the road after offering 'aarti' to the potholes of Indrali bridge in the city. 'Urulu Seve' is a ritual that involves rolling on the ground around temples for the welfare of the society. Speaking on the occasion, Olakadu said though the tender was allotted for the road on the Udupi-Manipal national highway three years ago, the stretch is still in a pathetic condition.

"No one is raising any issue. Thousands of people use this road every day. Even the Chief Minister has passed through this stretch. Either Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Union Minister Nitin Gadkari should arrive here for the road to be repaired," he said.

Nityananda Olakadu staged a protest against the deplorable condition of the road near Indrali bridge. As a mark of protest, he rolled over the pothole-filled roads in #Udupi. https://t.co/pYGENBMXVt

— Shivani Kava (@kavashivani) September 13, 2022

Olakadu said people of Udupi are innocent. There are no street lights on the road and accidents are taking place here every day. Many cows and calves have died for the same reason. Those who ask votes in the name of cows and calves are not bothered about the deplorable condition of the road, he said. He began his protest by breaking a coconut and offering 'aarti' to the potholes on the road.

Karnataka has seen novel forms of protest to highlight the bad condition of roads. The video of an ‘astronaut’ moonwalking in Bengaluru had gone viral earlier. Baadal Nanjundaswamy, a Bengaluru-based artist, has for long been turning the city’s potholes into thought-provoking works of art. In September 2019, he had an actor suit up as an astronaut and pretend to moonwalk on the pothole-riddled Tunganagar Main Road to highlight how ‘cratered’ it was with potholes.

In October 2019, activists in Karnataka’s Shivamogga district turned to ‘fishing’ in a pothole  to highlight just how ‘deep’ the problem was. Vidyarthi Sangathane members had staged this demonstration to point out the bad road conditions in Durgigudi, Park Extension, Tilak Nagar, and Gandhi Nagar of the district. 

With IANS inputs