Pink is the colour of love!!

A long time ago, my friend D told me that her friend A had once gone batty and had begun yelling, 'pink is the colour of love!!!'. In the middle of the street. It is indeed. This article is an extract from the Statesman, today.

Colour me pink... or an anti-Maoist magenta!

Manoj Chaurasia
PATNA, Sept. 18: The Bihar government hopes to be in the pink ~ literally. In a move more usually associated with camp interior decorators on home makeover shows, officials in the state have turned to colour therapy to solve crime, painting a notoriously lawless town pink in the hope it will drive out criminals and promote harmony.
The district headquarter town of Aurangabad in central Bihar, which is known as a hub of Naxalite activities, was painted a uniform shade of rose ~ or “anti-Maoist magenta” ~ two weeks ago on orders of the district administration. Officials believe the lick of calming paint will foster “universal brotherhood” in the communally-sensitive town and put a stop to the violence that has marred the area for the last two decades. Jaipur already goes by the sobriquet of “Pink City”, though one imagines the founding fathers of the Rajasthan town went about it for different reasons.
“We decided to paint the entire township a soothing pink after getting formal consent from all sections of society in the hope that it will foster communal amity and keep a check on unlawful activities,” Aurangabad district magistrate Mr Birendra Bahadur Pandey told The Statesman.
The man behind the decorating is said to the sub-divisional officer (SDO) of Sadar Aurangabad, Mr Arvind Kumar Singh, who proposed the colour change at a meeting of the Town Development Council held recently under the chairmanship of Mr Rais Azam Khan. “Everyone appreciated my idea and it was decided to seek consent from residents before going ahead with the plan,” Mr Singh said.
The campaign has been launched with the motto: “Pink Aurangabad, green Aurangabad; clean Aurangabad, discipline(d) Aurangabad.”
“We requested citizens to raise funds and launch a drive to plant trees. We have requested residents to voluntarily remove all illegal encroachments from government land and become ideal citizens by disciplining themselves. The response has been tremendous”, the SDO added. “Within a fortnight, more than 70 per cent of the town (with a population of more than 500,000) was painted pink and we hope to paint the rest by Deepawali when most householders like to give a fresh coat of paint to their dwellings,” he said.
Aurangabad has witnessed more than 1,000 people killed in Naxal-related violence over the past 20 years, including when 54 people were hacked to death in a late-night attack by the banned Maoist Communist Centre (now the Communist Party of India-Maoist) in the upper caste dominated Dalelchak-Baghaura village on 29 May, 1987. Now, the town’s authorities hope their makeover job will have the town in the news for other reasons.