At Tulshibaug, business & shopping override safety

PUNE: All it takes is five short steps to cover the width of one of the six exits from Tulshibaug. Even this narrow space is blocked with a sea of vendors, their wares and shoppers. Any escape, if the need arises, is fraught with

danger

.


Plastic sheets that cover the roofs of old houses, bamboo poles that jut out, loose and dangerously hanging electric wiring, hotels, street food vendors with coal and kerosene stoves and plastic goods, shoes, synthetic clothes and goods are everywhere. A fire can consume all this is no time.

Shopping

at Tulshibaug

is money’s worth, but the crowd is huge. Hundreds of people, including children and the elderly, mill around unmindful of the dangers they are courting every day and every minute.

Remedial measures to decongest the area are necessary now, according to those well acquainted with Tulshibaug. The congestion in the narrow lanes came into sharp focus after a fire broke out in the historic Tulshibaugwada on Saturday evening.

Since the fire broke out in a part of the wada along the main road, it was easily accessible to the fire brigade. But a fire inside the congested lanes where a market thrives the whole day can led to a bigger disaster.

“Back in my childhood there were shops within the premises of the Ram Mandir. Over the last 20 years, Tulshibaug has changed and become one of the most prominent marketplaces in Pune,” Vivek Khatavkar, president of Tulshibaug Ganapati Mandal, said.

Tulshibaug is where women can find stuff from a safety pin to kitchen utensils, he added.

Yet the products, people stepping around one another in the absence of the space to walk, vendors selling candy floss, corn, two-wheelers parked haphazardly in the narrowest of lanes are sending alarm bells ringing loud. The remaining few dilapidated houses with narrow openings and old wiring will only add to the chaos.

Are vendors equipped?

Businessmen at Tulshibaug said they are equipped to handle a disaster. Nitin Pandit, secretary of Tulshibaug Parisar Vyapari Samiti, said, “The shopkeepers and vendors at Tulshibaug have been trained by Pune Fire Brigade to tackle such incidents. We have 625 commercial establishments and 325 vendors are authorized and have PMC certificates. These vendors, running stalls outside stores, are using electricity connections from the adjacent stores and paying the store owners a fee every month as per mutual agreement. We try to keep new vendors out as it is already congested.”

But he also says there is confusion when the PMC sends an anti-encroachment squad. “Then everyone is running around to avoid them which scares customers. However, shopkeepers tell them to wait in their stores,” he said.

Kasba-Vishrambaugwada ward officer Ashish Mahadalkar said vendors at Tulshibaug are authorized. “There could be some unauthorized vendors, but most have been here for years,” he said. Pandit said the Tulshibaug Parisar Vikas Samiti has told shopkeepers to keep extinguishers handy. “We are also looking at more CCTV cameras,” he added.

What started the fire?

Head of fire department Prashant Ranpise said, “The store was stocked with artificial flowers and other inflammable material, the fire spread. Since the fire had already spread, we could not identify the source. Locals told us it was a short-circuit in the shop.” Pandit said sparking in a nearby electric pole started the fire. “Shop owners from the area had intimated the power utility about it,” he added.

Officials from Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited said all the cables in the area are underground and a fire breaking out due to an electric pole is unlikely.

“The sub-station is intact. If there was a short circuit, the system would have tripped. We cut off electricity after fire brigade intimated us,” the official said.