Drive against billboards is eyewash

Billboards, flex boards, glow sign boards, neon sign boards, acrylic boards and acrylic led boards are all meant for promotion of products, services and personalities. But the fact is, they are too numerous and at times too large to offer any respite for the tired eyes of city dwellers. Either in the capital or in other cities they have simply become an eyesore. They obstruct natural views of things around and even that of the sky.
Understandably, involved with the random display of such boards are political lackeys who enjoy a kind of impunity. The fact that most display boards are illegal and at times they are pulled down on this ground should itself be contradictory. If they are illegal, how can they be placed at the strategic points? If the city authorities do not approve the places for hoisting them in the first place, how do they com up there?
Sometimes blank hoarding boards are there with a three or four cell phone numbers on them. This means the space is on offer for commercial advertisement. But how come that the men behind it could manage to erect a large hoarding without the knowledge of the city authorities! Even if they did, it has escaped the notice of the authorities concerned. Is it possible?
Actually, the problem lies with the medicine mean to cure the disease. Political considerations take the better of respect for laws. Those who have illegally placed the billboards have to be distributed favour for party loyalty. Politics has to be used as a means to earning bucks. If it is apparently at no one's expense, it is most welcome. Thus runs the logic for the party affiliates.
However, those minting money from such illegal ploy are hardly aware either of the ruination of the aesthetic view or the dangers posed to human life. There are huge hoardings held aloft by a single post. Now in normal condition, such poles may be enough to hold the display boards firm. But when strong winds or storms lash those, chances are that the boards will lose balance and come crumbling. Actually, in a number of cases, such unipolar hoardings have come down and led to casualties. The latest hoarding to come crushing was in Motijheel. Mercifully, no one was killed there nor hurt grievously. But if such billboards fall on some one, the difference between life and death can be wafer thin.
If the billboards have to be put up at all, they should be scientifically designed, their weight measured in order to make them safe and secure. Not a single advertisement board, glow sign board or neon sign board should be allowed to be hoisted without such protective justification. The city corporations should be given the legal authorities for approval of such display. A team of engineers, artists and urban planners can be assigned to choose the points where advertisement boards will be hoisted with the measurement, height and distance from the footpath.
There should be policy guidelines for such display boards so that they do not crowd the open space on the one hand and on the other pose danger to human life. If the newly elected mayors take up the issue seriously, they will have to wage a war against their party people in the first place. Where some temporary display boards are concerned, they themselves will be accused of illegally hoisting those all over the city.
In fact, self promotion has gone to such an extent that taste has become a great casualty. People have simply forgotten that such exercises were deemed indecent in this land's culture a few decades ago. Now there is a mad race for self aggrandisement. In this connection, a metaphor from cricket can illustrate the point. Form is temporary but class is permanent. Similarly, political minnows or mediocre can at best create a temporary ripple but leaders of exceptional quality will have a permanent niche in the nation's heart.