Manic Monsoon Madness

My May 19 post had talked about Mumbai’s roads crumbling and flooding at different points in the city due to the shoddy and lethargic work being carried out by the BMC through its gravy train contractors. Well, yesterday was the first day of continuous rains, from light to heavy and guess what we had to go through the agony of bad and terribly congested roads due to water logging and potholes.

Potholes have already started developing on the western express highway from Bandra onwards, the paver blocks have sunk and in places have come out leaving gaping holes which when underwater could cause serious damage to two wheelers and their riders. The tragedy of all this is we know it is going to happen, but we have BMC officials mouthing age old platitudes while twiddling their thumbs. We have a Municipal Commissioner who is more keen on trying to control the media rather than controlling and putting in line a system which rewards performance rather than corruption – I mean the Rs. 1000 crore gravy train which is being ridden by the BMC officials through its road repair contract. The real question to be addressed is why have road repairs – can decent roads not be built in Mumbai – just travel across to Gujarat and see the quality of roads – not concrete mind you just plain macadam (tar) roads. Smooth and a total pleasure to drive on!

Yesterday, it took me two hours to drive from Worli to Andheri, just 18 km. When I run from my home to office in Andheri MIDC, a distance of 14 kms it takes me and hour and a half. Traffic had completely stopped moving, can you imagine, and no floods mind you. Probably the fear of getting stuck in a 26/7 like situation got everybody out of their offices early to flood the roads. We spend crores on infrastructure and a few more crores in wasted fuel and maintenance costs because the crores spent earlier were not well spent. This happens year after year.

Just pray that we get some decent people to run our city rather than corrupt bureaucrats and politicians so that Mumbai could become what it should have long ago – a world class city with infrastructure to match!