India's cities are amongst the most clumsy and lacking in infrastructure. As the urban population has been on the rise, the cost of Industrial growth has been adversely affecting the environment and a couple of seasonal and non seasonal rains are just enough to make life difficult in these cities. If you turn back and look at the flooding villages, the question which comes to your mind can be funny. If the rain has prevented you from going to your office owing to the disrupted traffic and the incessant rains in the city, the villages are shown in the TV as completely cut off from rest of the world. So what else is there to manage in the country?
The Indian capital has several cases of water logging,the Metro train stopping and breaking down at Connaught Place just as the number of trains were sought to be increased to cater to the Common Wealth Games. The city, flooded by the Yamuna is now getting spruced up...not for the CWG but for battling upsurge of epidemics.
Well. Mumbai, the commercial capital finds it very difficult to hang on if there are just a couple of rains. Bangalore literally has no roads. Another southern hub, Hyderabad has the residential areas placed higher than the roads and the roads are actually the storage areas of rain water and also the gutters. Imagine the plight of the people.
An article in the Economic Times calls our Urban Development Minister as Non Development Minister and rightly comments on the blame game-Raj Thackeray would call it an immigrant problem and the Kolkatans would call the Corporation as 'Chor-polation'.
The quality of work and the kind of professionalism which has been lacking for years is glaring in our faces. If newly laid road gives in in just six months,we know what we are talking about. Nation building takes off from real infrastructure building. If the planner understands the nation and makes the contractor understand the importance of nation building, some ingenuity would seep into this rather than corruption seeping into these activities like drainage water joining our drinking water pipe lines. We need to learn from China and Singapore. There is transfer of skills taking place from one part to the other and in India, we take pride in pulling down even good work done by others. It is the mindset which really matters...
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