Footpath's - the word suggests a place where persons traveling by foot usually tread on. If Bangalore is famous for its dug up footpaths, Mangalore city is famous for its missing footpaths! This week we look at the footpaths of Mangalore where you need to watch where you step!

This is the footpath on Ganapathy High school road near Hotel Srinivas. In this path where pedestrians are supposed to be present, a huge electric transformer has established itself as if to direct the pedestrians to take the road or get electrocuted trying to wriggle through the foundations of the transformer!.Another Huge transformer is just about 50 meters away from the above spot opp. The janatha Bazaar near the Ganapathy High School Gate…God save the kids studying there!

In Most of the places we see the footpaths have either been occupied by the footpath vendors or by owners of large multistoried buildings who cannot find a place on their plot to dump the construction materials! The parking lots of Some of the buildings which were in the site plan approved by the MUDA seem to vanish once the building is transferred from paper to reality! and so all the vehicles to such buildings find themselves occupying the footpaths much to the inconvenience of the people using the footpaths!

Most of the footpaths of Mangalore have been intruded into by shop keepers as in the market road and by hawkers selling anything from footwear, flowers, electronic goods etc. The problem is severe as sometimes it feels safer to walk on the middle of the road rather than on the footpaths……for these hawkers harass poor passerby to purchase their wares.

Then there are the roads which seem to be hungry for more space and seemingly have eaten up the footpaths like near Bendorewell circle, jyothi circle where the express busses in their never ending hurry do not hesitate to tread onto that little path on which we would feel safe, walking!

Then there are the foot paths at lalbagh where many a families in transit from farway gulbarga etc have made a home… the MCC is building new footpaths at places where there is not much density of people traveling by foot as at ladyhill. Very often the slabs of cement covering the footpaths are opened up to clear any blockade of debris in the drains below them or to repair some telephone cables. But the job of removing and re-fitting those slabs of concrete/ granite or filling up the trenches seems to be too much for the contractors assigned with this work that they either end up breaking the slabs or not covering the footpaths so that the next time they are given the work of cleaning the drains they can save on labour!

The MCC needs to directs its attention towards this anomaly so that the pedestrians are spared from saying their prayers while walking on these foot paths so that atleast if we cannot have decent roads, let us have good footpaths!