Do we remember how many times Delhi and Bangalore have been submerged due to seasons rains. Umpteenth time. The recent deluge followed by the sad saga of commotion and road rage witnessed in Gurgaon, a suburb of Delhi isn't something new and out of the blue.
Not that we had been hit by a typhoon or hurricane of a magnitude of category 5, which caught everyone by surprise, but hit by the expected annual monsoon rains at the peak of the monsoon season.
Yet I am not surprised, as I saw last year in Delhi, clogged drains with no natural outlet for water lying low in low lying areas. Come monsoon, the disaster was waiting to happen.
The inept and inefficient authorities as usual were caught napping, quite aware of the inadequate infrastructure but still without any contingency plan - exposing how unprepared we are for such an eventuality.
And it happened. Cars were stuck in a melee for hours on water logged roads. Commuters had to leave their cars and wade through the rivulets. Even there were reports of folks on boats fishing on the paved roads of Bangalore, arguably the most hightech city of India.
After being stuck for hours, what if one has this urgent need to pee. Guys can sneak into a corner and add more color to the yellow water beneath them, exposing their ugly underbelly as the same of Delhi gets exposed. Pity the ladies, for them it would have been a pitiable condition. For those with loose bowels, water isn't far away.
Sarcasm aside, this is a terse reminder of our lack of basic INFRASTRUCTURE, which is the biggest bottleneck to our image and growth. To those who dream of Mumbai to be Shanghai and Delhi to be a Seoul or Singapore - Dream on.
No comments:
Post a Comment