Recently, before leaving the city, an expat left behind this 'hoarding' as his thank you note to Bengaluru. Humorous indeed, but to us and BBMP, this should be a hurtful mockery of the way things are out of control on our roads.
You might say the hoarding menace isn't as important for BBMP, there are other bigger things to do first. I disagree. If you don't deal with lawlessness on such simple things, citizens know how you would on the "bigger" things. Below, some political or 'disguised'-political hoardings (no offence against the netas depicted there, just picked the first two I found on the day)
Another one
How hard is it to find out who put them up, and who paid for these? As long as you can zoom on these hoardings, you can spot a 'lead' on both these hoardings. here:
This is it. Mysore digitals, or Kumaran Arts, or Kumaran-flex arts, numbers are printed on most of these, with phone numbers. Now you know how our expat friend managed to do his nice big thank you note. Why is it so hard for BBMP to chase on one, and set just one or two examples to send some fear down the flex board printers and those who pay for them?
Each such hoarding is 'revenue-leakage' for BBMP. Simple. If I am company X, and my commercial ad board gets covered or dwarfed by these hoardings, why would I pay the 'right market value' for my ad boards?
More on the economics of these 'hoardings' later. If you are a journalist reading this, just call Mysore digitals or Kumaran-flex arts, you would have leads on a killer story on how money flows on these.
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the hoarding business - money?
If you have been observing closely, the number of "faces" on these political hoardings has seen a steady rise over last 6-7 years. Gone are the huge cutouts of "the leader", and just 2-3 faces below. 10-20 faces around "a leader" is more common, except in cases where birthday greetings are conveyed.
You need to pay a "price" to get your face up, in most cases, to "the leader" around who your face will show up on these hoardings. The money, I believe goes to the leader whose loyalty you get to buy through these. In most cases, the cost of printing and putting these up is shared by the "faces" that are collaborating. In some rare cases, the party or the leader may take care of paying the artists and printers. In some more rare cases, the leader may wish to reward you by adding your face on these as a favour.
now, its daylight business
Moving these hoardings around, setting them up used to be night time activity. The guys have gotten bold, its turing into daytime activity now.
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