Posters mar Tiruchi cityscape

Poster culture is plastering public places with paper

Walls without posters or handbills stuck on them are rare to find in the city these days. Whether to publicise films, political gatherings or commemorate the dead, besides announcing pilgrimages, quack cures and felicitating people on everything from getting their ears pierced to getting married, Tiruchi is getting plastered with paper notices.

“We have noticed this scourge of posters along with flex banners spreading across the city in recent months. It is marring Tiruchi’s aspiration to be a clean city, and needs urgent attention from the authorities. We are planning to present a petition to this effect to the Mayor soon,” P. Mohan, founder-president, Youth Exnora, told The Hindu.

Removing posters and handbills stuck to public buildings has become an additional task for environment groups as they try to clean the urban landscape.

“The poster culture is getting out of hand in the city. With printing costs of these notices being low when ordered in large numbers, most people simply get 500-1000 pieces and stick them on every available space,” said K. Sathish Kumar, assistant professor, Tamil, Kalai Kaviri College of Fine Arts and official in charge of Thanneer students eco-club.

Mr. Kumar said that the proliferation of posters had become a problem in recent months. “Stray cattle flock to the walls tempted by the starchy maida glue that is used to stick the posters. Very often goats can be seen roaming with large sections of the poster sheets on the roads,” he said.

The announcements are usually put up in the dead of the night, and at times, bolder workers even cover signboards indicating road directions or area names with posters. With publicity being the only criterion, they turn up in places that attract heavy traffic during daytime, such as flyovers and interior road crossings.

Since there is little official scrutiny, posters have often been stuck on walls that were spruced up earlier as part of beautification programmes by the Corporation. The back walls of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital compound in Puthur for example, which once bore artistic depictions of regional culture and history, were painted over first with advertising messages, and now bear posters on top, creating a confusing melange of visual imagery.