In Chennai, ruined roads beg for attention

Everybody knows why ... half the thickness of asphalt that should be applied, goes into somebody's pocket

What a great city! The Chennai Corporation wants to give employment to many people every year after the monsoon. Spending on Infrastructure maintenance should not be mistaken! By giving contracts for repair works periodically, many folks get benefitted!

Who bothers about implementing the various projects listed under 'Infrastrcuture' in our Five Year Plans? If the national highway plans are lagging behind or the metros’ roads are woefully inadequate to cater to the increased traffic, you have just to bear with it. Two weeks before your sister financial daily carried a revealing story of how a plan-made in 1998- for laying a better road in the city of Chennai connecting it to the Chennai Port has still not been laid. Meantime, several shipping and transport minsiters and chairmen of Chennai Port Trust have come and gone. If anyone of them had bothered about the state of this crucial link road things would have been sorted out. But scheduled completion is alien to our ministers and official machinery. It was only after the local folks rebelled against the lorry drivers using the decrepit road causing accidents and killing their children, the news came to be revealed by a vigilant journalist. But even after two weeks of that report, there is no response either from the city mayor or from the Chennai Port Trust or from the central ministry of highways and shipping. So much for the dictum of ministerial accountability and official responsibility. If this incident had not been reported by that newspaper, people would not have come to know about the loss to the Chennai Port Trust. Bulk of the media was more concerned about the shipping minister not visiting the port trust snce his taking over as that was the only panacea! Who wants him to make such visits; all that the people want is scheduled completion of the projects.

Year after year, after the monsoon rains, the pictures will be the same. It is the fate of the Chennaites. The government should be ashamed to see this kind of pictures. But alas! they have no such feelings.

Government of India and Tamil Nadu spends lakhs, if not crores of Rupees in advertisements to draw tourism and new investments in. This one slide show-showing the real condition of the country (to the world)would be an eye-opener and drive away those even considering to do anything. Authorities! Please wakeup and do something for the improvement. It cannot last for ever.

I have seen similar pictures and the same question in "The Hindu" for decades now. Our roads will survive for more than a year only when "accountability" improves. When you punish the people responsible for laying the roads last year that makes them feel for it, they will ensure it is laid out properly going forward. Things will naturally improve. It is as simple as that. The definition of insanity is for one to keep doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.