From a distance, it looked like a Samajwadi Party poster. A closer examination revealed it to be a billboard instead, advertising the arrival of a new fetish of the Akhilesh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh: the bike track.
You can see them near the governor’s bungalow in Lucknow, in Agra, at many places in Ghaziabad and even in Bareilly. There are plans to have bicycle tracks in almost all major cities of the state. Ghaziabad alone will soon have a 100-kilometre-long track at an estimated cost of Rs 22 crore.
“Yeh sarkar ka naya natak hai. Ise bane mahino hogaye lekin aaj tak maine ismein kisi ko bhi cycle chalate nahin dekha hai (This is the government’s new gimmick. The track was built months ago but I am yet to see anyone using it),” said Atyendra Maurya, a resident of Bareilly, leaning on his motorbike while chatting up with a friend.