I was rushing to get into a train this morning when I went sprawling. The cat call that stayed with me was a screeching "Aunteeeee, take care."
Here I was on the station floor and what bothered me more was not my poor doddering knee cap but someone calling me "Aunty." Getting old is no fun, feeling old is worse.
"Vera, Vera, What has become of you? Does anybody else here feel the way I do?"
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Roads and Accountability
Who makes the decisions to dig at the MMRDA? They dig up newly made Concrete roads to do what they should have done before making the road, break water pipes repeatedly at three different places within 2 kilometers, wasting gallons of the precious liquid, start work on busy intersections with skeleton staff and waste time.
Traffic is forever stuck at narrow lanes left for zillion vehicles to pass while a man- hole is without a cover and left unattended for days together in this single lane that they have left us. Who is responsible? Who is accountable? Who will ask the questions? How do I do it?
I visited 2 other cities recently. Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Bangalore seems worse than us but Ahmedabad was great. The road works contractors work at nights, finish jobs they start within time. The city is small and there is hardly any traffic compared to Bombay but they still think it is important to care for the road travelers.
The MMRDA just puts up a board to suffer today for a better tomorrow; I have been seeing it for the last 6 years on the Andheri-Kurla Road. Every year there is a new plan, half done work and broken pipes. Roads are wider, traffic is higher, plans are bigger but nothing gets better. In some cities bridges are completed in 1 month, we take 6 months and still make uneven badly finished ones. No one asks any questions, the Government feeds the road mafia year after year the World Bank's dollars and they keep taking the sorry citizens who traverse these roads for a bumpy ride.
I waste time writing a blog to get rid of my anger and will be back on the road come Monday morning without a crib. Who will write that Petition? Who has the time? Who will make the time? My Mom says I should go and fight. File a Petition, go talk to somebody in the BMC. But I know I will not do anything. I will just go on finding ways to beat the traffic, leave early, stay late, work harder and forget the woes of the world in a comedy.
Are we really a democracy? Or is this a new form of slavery and autocracy or is it the Jungle?
Traffic is forever stuck at narrow lanes left for zillion vehicles to pass while a man- hole is without a cover and left unattended for days together in this single lane that they have left us. Who is responsible? Who is accountable? Who will ask the questions? How do I do it?
I visited 2 other cities recently. Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Bangalore seems worse than us but Ahmedabad was great. The road works contractors work at nights, finish jobs they start within time. The city is small and there is hardly any traffic compared to Bombay but they still think it is important to care for the road travelers.
The MMRDA just puts up a board to suffer today for a better tomorrow; I have been seeing it for the last 6 years on the Andheri-Kurla Road. Every year there is a new plan, half done work and broken pipes. Roads are wider, traffic is higher, plans are bigger but nothing gets better. In some cities bridges are completed in 1 month, we take 6 months and still make uneven badly finished ones. No one asks any questions, the Government feeds the road mafia year after year the World Bank's dollars and they keep taking the sorry citizens who traverse these roads for a bumpy ride.
I waste time writing a blog to get rid of my anger and will be back on the road come Monday morning without a crib. Who will write that Petition? Who has the time? Who will make the time? My Mom says I should go and fight. File a Petition, go talk to somebody in the BMC. But I know I will not do anything. I will just go on finding ways to beat the traffic, leave early, stay late, work harder and forget the woes of the world in a comedy.
Are we really a democracy? Or is this a new form of slavery and autocracy or is it the Jungle?
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