How Lucknow’s celebrated heritage structures are suffering the poster mafia. By Sudipta Dev
The city of Lucknow is famous worldwide for its fascinating culture and beautiful monuments. Though the Government of UP is focusing on positioning Lucknow as a global tourism destination as a part of the much promoted Heritage Arc, there is a lot wanting at the grassroots level. One of which is of course convincing their own netas to not deface the walls of the city, in particular the heritage areas with posters. “Political posters seem to make the bosses happy, that is one reason why they never object to it and that is a reason enough not to have any rule in place in Lucknow. Beautiful heritage areas like Hazratganj famous for its Victorian Walks is all patched up with posters with no government agency to claim or check this,” said Prateek Hira, president and CEO, Tornos Destinations (India), a leading tour operator in the city showcasing the heritage of Lucknow to tourists from across the world.
Pointing out that even heritage monuments like Bara Imambara are not spared by the poster mafia of the city, Hira mentioned that any tourist encountering these first forms an adverse opinion about the city. “A foreigner recently commented sarcastically about crazy honking on the roads and walls plastered with posters. My concern is that we are coining fancy words like ‘smart city’, ‘Heritage Arc’, ‘heritage capital’, ‘Swachh Bharat’,’Clean Lucknow, Green Lucknow’ et al but somehow we are not thinking of introspecting and understanding our collective and basic responsibility towards our cities.”
According to him the local police outpost/ police station should be made answerable and organisation/ individuals pasting posters on walls be heavily penalised and ensure that repainting is done. “But what we require is the will from our political classes who should stop being flattered by posters reading their names and hailing them,” asserted Hira. These advertisers do not also leave the radium painted road dividers which are also plastered with posters.
An NGO, the Lucknow Society, has been working hard to tackle this poster menace. Almost 1000 volunteers of the society are constantly on a lookout for unauthorised posters and take initiatives to get them removed. “Wherever we clean the posters they get put up again on the same spot. Then we call the people whose posters have been put up and ask them to remove the same,” stated Shamim A Aarzoo, founder and CEO, Lucknow Society. He believes that social media has had a positive impact to tackle the menace. “We have more than 230,000 friends on Facebook, and to avoid a negative posting this has acted in a few instances in deterring political leaders – they have had to remove their posters,” added Aarzoo. Acknowledging that tourism cannot be promoted in Lucknow unless the heritage areas are clean, he mentioned that recently Lucknow Society had a meeting with the district magistrate who suggested that the volunteers should be involved with monuments. “We will do a recce and try to understand what is the nuisance associated with the area,” said Aarzoo.