Falling Apart

IT IS APPALLING that in the 21st century when we constantly discuss $4 trillion economies and India’s position as the fourth-largest economy in the world, we still neglect basic civic infrastructure. Bridges that are meant to align don’t ever align. Those that exist, collapse. Every monsoon we have a veritable gallery of streets being flooded.

People are happily being electrocuted because they can’t see raw wires that are now submerged. We turn Gurugram into Venice at the drop of a raindrop, and then we say, “Oh, we are talking about a Millennium City.” The tragedy is that in India there is no deterrent punishment like there is in China.

But no, because we are a functioning democracy, we must tolerate incompetence under the garb of equality. The tragedy is that every government is guilty. Look at what we have done across India to basic infrastructure, and add to that the total apathy of the Indian citizens. The Indian citizen will maintain their home with panache, keeping it clean, but right outside, there will be a pool of garbage, and no one cares.

It is someone else’s problem. I was delighted when the prime minister launched the Swachh Bharat programme. There’s only so much and no more that programmes can do. Human beings need to be programmed to believe in sanitation and cleanliness. And we keep talking about how clean we are, how religious we are.

Look at our temples. Go to any large temple in the north or in the east, perhaps even the west, and you will see the amount of filth that lies in the abodes of God. I’m amazed as to why governments don’t believe in taking basic steps, and why do the courts not interfere. The reasons could be many. One, the courts don’t really care about the common citizen as you and I think they do.

They may believe that all of India is like Lutyens’, but actually, all of India is like Lootians, where people have been looted of basic infrastructure. The government doesn’t care because they know when it comes to voting, people will vote on grounds of religiosity or ideology and no one cares for development.

Sometimes the media takes it up, but then the media too forgets. And this is what our entire tragedy is. As a nation, we have forgotten to be clean, we’ve forgotten the basics of hygiene, and we don’t give a damn about sanitation, which is why our streets look the way they do. If you can walk on a street in India, you should be getting the Nobel Prize along with Donald J Trump, because there is no other way that you can walk without either being run over or falling into a manhole, for which the entire Army will be requisitioned to take you out of it.

I mean, this is the only country where people are religiously falling not over each other, but into open manholes, and we can’t do anything about it. So my advice to the government and to people who run these states is that wake up and smell the filth because if you don’t do anything about it, you will bring about the kind of degradation that is unimaginable. The tragedy is that Gurugram pays the highest amount of tax in Haryana and has the least civic infrastructure.

They have more bars than traffic lights, there are more liquor vends than schools, and that is what we’re turning our country into. And until someone actually raps these people on the knuckles, nothing is going to happen.

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