I Love My Kochi : Mission Clean Kochi

I Love My Kochi : No compromise on Cleaning

I Love My Kochi – Let’s fight against visual pollution

My Dear Friends, 

 Kochi-the princess of the Arabian sea has been trapped in a visual pollution. Every nook and corner of the city is filled with huge flex boards and posters. These publicity stunts even disrupts the traffic. We must wipe out these eye sores from our sights to make the city clean. Until then we just cannot make any claim in this regard. Billboards are juxtaposed like the huge cut outs of the Tamil Actors. Flex printing becomes compulsory even for a petty function held in a ward. It must be noted that most of these boards are erupted with no consent. And hence, remain illegal.

Clean roads are a matter of pride. Keeping  them clean is a culture. The tendency to use roads as the exhibition outlets should not be entertained. “ Flex board culture” is new word that connotes the new age vanity. Some are trying to make everything a billboard and market themselves. This must be stopped.

The pace of the advertisements emerging  on the streets are alarming. Political parties and organizations are making the “flex culture” inevitable in their existence. Celebrities from the tinsel town as well as the cricket players are standing every where as huge cut outs and thus make a great wall within. Why can’t we take a different turn? 

A former cricketer has tweeted about  the neatness of our city.  It seems, he wish if India had  transformed like this city. His tweet is a matter of pride for us. And thanks for those kind words.

I LOVE MY KOCHI campaign focuses at the task of delinking itself from the ugly billboards that spoils the natural beauty of this coastal town. The first phase of the task has been started by removing the obstructing posters and boards from the city roads. Illegal boards are masking the scenic charm of the city. Plastic flex poses a major threat to the fragile eco system too. Hence,   I LOVE MY KOCHI campaign indirectly supports the cause of the environment. There are at least 200 flex making centers in Kerala. Many have flourished in our city too. We, the corporation is not going for a witch- hunt against the flex makers to uproot the entire industry. But we are very firm on removing any object that kills the beauty of the city. So, the flexes that comes in this line will not be spared. That is a policy matter. Should we keep these obstructing objects in our roads? We all owe an answer for this question. If your answer is no, then let us join hands to make Kochi beautiful. 

Anticipating your co operation

with love

your mayor

Tony Chammany 

I LOVE MY KOCHI

English Translation:

I LOVE MY KOCHI

My dear friends,

I am starting a blog! For Kochi from me!. With the wish that this city, which throbs with history, remains beautiful always.

Before a tsunami in some ancient age led to the creation of this port town, no traveller who passed by this route had made any reference to the existence of a place called Kochi. Neither Ptolemy or Marco Polo talked about it. Mahuvan from China was the earliest traveller who referred to it.

The history of modern Kochi begins with Sir Robert Bristo. On April 13, 1920, when the Madras Mail stopped at the Ernakulam station, it heralded a revolutionary change for the city. For, that was the day when Bristo set foot in our city. When he made a short journey on his tiny boat Vasco along the backwaters, it turned out to be a journey of progress for the Kochi port too. Transforming the tiny port to the Queen of the Arabian Sea was Bristo’s unforgettable gift to all of us.

The same town grew to be a melting pot of cultures and arts of various hues, and people began to communicate with each other in around 13 languages. Over the years, it has expanded to a giant Metro!

I now come to a subject that I want all of you to ponder upon. We are proud of our cleanliness. But just think for a minute. Where does our cleanliness begin and end?

No doubt, we all maintain hygiene at the personal level. But what about the scene around us?

How many of us are ready to take responsibility for it? Every Gandhi Jayanti, we join together to sweep the streets and remove the garbage.  Such efforts may continue for a week at the most and then it is back to square one.

Frankly, shouldn’t it be an everyday activity just the way we brush our teeth daily? How will our country be if that happens?

Don’t have any illusions that if you keep your surroundings clean, you will earn appreciation from others. It may be a thankless job. But think about the satisfaction that you will derive by doing it. Yes, the satisfaction of doing a good deed.

Actually, any habit is easy to develop, as long as we realise the purpose behind it. It is a skill but nobody will tell you how to begin. You need to develop it yourself by understanding its importance and reinforcing it in your active as well as passive consciousness. When this happens, the realisation will dawn that hygiene and cleanliness are not mere personal habits but concepts that involve other people and our surroundings too.

As a result, the concept of cleanliness will take shape in a person’s mind and spread to the collective consciousness of the society. As we know, cleanliness is next only to godliness. Each of us will then emit the light of awareness that will soon envelop the surroundings. When we do these small acts of service, for ourselves and others, we are sure to feel happy and satisfied.

So, on this Gandhi Jayanti day, let us all Kochiites take a vow to carve out a new path to a healthy future that is rooted in a clean society.

I had shared these ideas with the students of St Teresa’s College yesterday. It is their receptiveness and encouragement that convinced me that I should take this idea to the community at large. It is hard for the subconscious mind to do anything that is not part of routine. But what if we make it a festival? Yes a festival of cleanliness for 100 days. It will then become ingrained in us.

Ours is truly God’s Own Country. But we need to do everything at our command, together and with a sense of camaraderie. This is a request from me. If we can do this, we will be among the happiest people on Earth. As I said before, let us make this a festival with the slogan, "I LOVE MY KOCHI".

I wish all the best to everyone, as I look forward with great hope towards a clean Kochi.

Your Mayor

Tony Chammany