In Bengaluru, a video of a shocking incident went viral as people from all walks of life showed how impatiently a driver urinates outside on Chandapura flyover. And that eye-popping video which shows exactly what was up has sparked a fierce debate over the city’s horrendous traffic jams and lack of public sanitation facilities. It came very recently and is located on the stretch of roads between Chandapura and Attibele, which is a well-known area of congestion bottlenecks. Stuck in what seemed to have been an endless snarl for hours, the driver obviously reached his breaking point.
The Viral Video: A desperate act
The viral footage shows a white vehicle frozen at a flyover, frozen in time at a standstill. The driver seems to be in his 30s or 40s, coming out of his car. In a faux privacy coverup, there are strategically open front and back doors on the side of his car to provide a temporary protection.
He then enters the toilet in broad daylight, among parked cars. This video was presumably taken by another commuter. It passed swiftly onto the Internet and netizens at first came out of all walks; from outraged to sympathetic and exasperated. It was criticized on many occasions as public indecency; at the same time, quite a large number sympathised with this driver's lot, seeing in him deep-seated chronic traffic challenges facing the city around it.
Its congestion is generally strong and there are hours of traffic obstructions, all through most of peak hours. Users of the traffic often report being stuck for two to three hours to get as little as a couple of kilometres. “This is not an isolated incident’’ an average commuter remarked on the way. "When you are stuck for hours and no public toilets at all, the right thing is, what are people supposed to do? It's embarrassing but it also shows a desperate situation," she said.
No Public Facilities: A Perpetual Problem
And that incident once again laid bare Bengaluru's enduring shortage of clean and accessible toilets which were especially lacking on the very major travel corridors and flyovers. It has offered modular toilet sets in some areas, but the city’s population and car-moving has been outpacing expansion of public infrastructure. For many years, civic activists have been pushing for more public restrooms, saying girls, children and the elderly etc. lack toilets and often suppress their natural urges or use unsanitary alternatives.
Legal and Social Implications
It is a crime to urinate publicly regardless of the municipal bylaws as well as the Indian Penal Code and you could be fined for urinating publicly and in some cases, jailed for doing so. But enforcement is sporadic, and the deeper problem of inadequate public facilities often goes unaddressed.
This video, which went viral, serves as a visceral visual analogue to the daily traffic nightmare countless millions of residents in Bengaluru have faced. It’s a savage snapshot of what people as desperate as they were when fundamental human needs intersect with systemic urban planning mistakes could do. It is much more than the actions of one man or failure of a city trying to deal with its own development.
