The Urban Decay Is Now Real

THERE IS NO better time for plain-speaking than now. No better time to come to terms with incompetence; corruption and ineptness: the kind of which India has never witnessed before. I am tired of being told that India has a smart cities programme: what we do have are smart cities mostly run by stupid people. People who actually don’t care about the citizens and treat urban decay as an elitist issue that will not rattle them at the hustings. They are unaware of the long-term damage they are doing to Brand India, as well as to the attractiveness of India, both as an investment and tourism destination. And what is an enduring shame is the fact that these rogues are going unchecked and unhindered. Both by the people and by the courts of law.

In this time and age, why should cities like Delhi, Gurugram, or an entire state like Goa cave in because of one heavy monsoon? Why should innocent lives be lost because of the apathy of municipal authorities, or why should the elderly have to live in fear of their homes being flooded? Why do we allow this to happen? One of the reasons is that we are largely a stupid electorate: we are so taken in by freebies that political parties offer that we don’t even bother about their competence or capabilities, and it is now for everyone to see.

Urban India is in the kind of decay it has never been in. Bridges are collapsing; tunnels are flooded; roads are caving in; people are living in miserable conditions even after paying municipal and federal taxes, and no one cares. Our MPs are happy to post pictures of their homes being flooded but they do precious little when it comes to raising their voices in Parliament since they are so busy abusing each other. What a colossal shame!

Look at what is happening in Gurugram, for example. You have some of India’s biggest companies headquartered here; some of the biggest hospitals, and some of the fanciest homes, and yet, you have to wade through water, encounter garbage, and pray to god that you don’t fall into an open manhole. You have a chief minister (of Haryana) who seems to have no time for governance: these are the people that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is promoting and then you wonder what happened to BJP’s promise of good governance?

It’s the same with Goa. The so-called smart city of Panjim represents a sewer; the dolts from various departments have dug up streets with no intention of repairing them. The ministers never suffer: it is the common citizen who does but then again, no one cares. Look at what happens year after year in Mumbai. The local train network is a veritable death trap; the people are now accustomed to the city shutting down when there is a heavy monsoon as if blaming the citizen for nature’s wrath!

How long do these rulers expect the citizens to live like this? You can keep talking to the world about how great we are as a country and how we are an economic powerhouse, but the truth of the matter is we are woefully miserable when it comes to the basics. Airport roofs flying off, hill stations being reduced to rubble, leaking buildings, and bridges to nowhere are now our leitmotif. We should be ashamed of what we have allowed our country to become and all the political parties are to blame because they engender the worst in those organisations that are meant to keep India’s infrastructure going.

And what’s best is that no one gets punished and the citizen too forgets and awaits the next crisis. I would advocate capital punishment for the offenders in charge of these bodies, but that too won’t happen.

I am generally an optimist but looking around as I do and travelling the length and breadth of this country, I have finally come to the conclusion that not even Lord Ram can save us. Even his abode in Ayodhya was allowed to leak.

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