There are probably more news reports on how the contractors and engineers have helped replicate the moon in Mumbai than the actual number of craters on our roads. Year after year, we haul up one scapegoat after the other, happy that we have someone to paste on to our dartboards for a while
There are probably more news reports on how the contractors and engineers have helped replicate the moon in Mumbai than the actual number of craters on our roads. Year after year, we haul up one scapegoat after the other, happy that we have someone to paste on to our dartboards for a while.
Yet, our roads continue to be moon-faced. Why have we never been able to go one monsoon without complaining about not seeing a single smooth stretch of road between our homes and destinations?
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Every year we are hoodwinked into believing that something is being done about it. This year, since April 17, when the municipal corporation decided to haul up those responsible for the deplorable state of the city's roads, 25 people have been arrested. Notably, none of those arrested had any significant say in how the roads were re-laid or repaired.
When it came to the big fish — the owners of the firms contracted to repair or relay the roads — the police inexplicably allowed them to apply for interim bail. While the civic chief seems hell-bent on laying the blame where it should be, in his apparently scathing report to be sent to the chief minister's office, he has not named that one senior civic official on whom the multi-crore road work scam hinges.
Is it really impossible for Mumbai to have smooth roads? Activists have pointed out the completely pothole-free roads of the airport runways as well as those of the Bandra-Worli sea link, which is a toll bridge. Why is the technology used there not replicated in the rest of Mumbai?
The elephant in the room is that there is a lot at stake in the multi-crore contracts given out for roads year after year. And, the stakeholders don't care what you think of their shoddy work.
Sadly, Mumbai has no choice but to continue ruining its cars and breaking its back navigating the surface of the moon.
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