Peddar Road repairs halted!
The Chief Minister has actually intervened in stopping minor repairs to Peddar Road –can you imagine the CM intervening over road repairs?! That is sheer casteism if you ask me! Has the CM ever intervened while major surgery has taken place on various roads in Mumbai and the operation left incomplete for months on end? Nope. Those roads are not used by the rich and the famous nor do they lead to the CM’s residence, you see.
Elsewhere in the civilized world, when road repair works are about to commence, a public notice is put up warning the users that the road will be closed for repairs from this day to this day and if the repairs are to be carried out in a few hours, they are usually carried out at night with no inconvenience to the public! In India, “sabh kuch chalta hai” that’s why you find roads works starting just before the onset of the monsoon, specially in March because the budgets are likely to lapse. So to utilize the money before it lapses contracts are awarded to hand-in-glove contractors for works which actually did not need to be carried out. What happens is the roads are dug up and left open for a number of days and then filled up. The contractor gets his money and the officers/corporators get their cut, a good road is screwed up before the rains and the same road gets damaged completely with the first rains, and the contractors get to do the monsoon repair job again – and the money cycle flows!
We have no start date for repairs nor do we have any end date, there is no responsibility and culpability is never fixed. It’s a free country for the people sitting in the bureaucratic and politicians chair whereas the citizens have to take everything with a smile – India hai bhai, sabh kuch chalta hai! Wake up guys and kick these guys where it hurts most during the forthcoming elections!!
I had written earlier on the state of roads – and how the average citizen has to suffer due to the negligence and sheer cussedness of the PWD and the contractors. I think the citizens should start becoming more actively involved in the welfare of the city, else in a few years time we will only have a dead city. Mumbai is already dying and is on life support systems – it requires major surgery to survive – that can only happen with right minded citizens being put in charge to execute a master plan to make over the city from scratch.
Elsewhere in the civilized world, when road repair works are about to commence, a public notice is put up warning the users that the road will be closed for repairs from this day to this day and if the repairs are to be carried out in a few hours, they are usually carried out at night with no inconvenience to the public! In India, “sabh kuch chalta hai” that’s why you find roads works starting just before the onset of the monsoon, specially in March because the budgets are likely to lapse. So to utilize the money before it lapses contracts are awarded to hand-in-glove contractors for works which actually did not need to be carried out. What happens is the roads are dug up and left open for a number of days and then filled up. The contractor gets his money and the officers/corporators get their cut, a good road is screwed up before the rains and the same road gets damaged completely with the first rains, and the contractors get to do the monsoon repair job again – and the money cycle flows!
We have no start date for repairs nor do we have any end date, there is no responsibility and culpability is never fixed. It’s a free country for the people sitting in the bureaucratic and politicians chair whereas the citizens have to take everything with a smile – India hai bhai, sabh kuch chalta hai! Wake up guys and kick these guys where it hurts most during the forthcoming elections!!
I had written earlier on the state of roads – and how the average citizen has to suffer due to the negligence and sheer cussedness of the PWD and the contractors. I think the citizens should start becoming more actively involved in the welfare of the city, else in a few years time we will only have a dead city. Mumbai is already dying and is on life support systems – it requires major surgery to survive – that can only happen with right minded citizens being put in charge to execute a master plan to make over the city from scratch.
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- Munnu