The Road That Never Was!!

It has been a long hiatus from since I stopped writing on my blog Back to School. Time has been just rapidly gliding by with relocation, ceremonies visits and finally bidding adieu to Kolkata for restarting our household in Mumbai. Ofcourse the fact remains that life now is almost a roller coaster with juggling office, home, wife and daughter! And amongst all this, it is needless to say that writing definitely is on the back burner. But last couple of weeks some issues has been gnawing at the back of the mind. High among them is the infrastructure woes that the common man is subjected to daily.

It’s quite often that one reads in the Mumbai dailies that the Chief Minister or the Commissioner, MMRDA or other persons of concern, speaks about making Mumbai Shanghai, Paris and you name it. Last week the MMRDA Commissioner said that he is for levy of some duties on car users as is done in Paris and London. The honourable CM just came back from a trip to US (to garner investment) and was away during the deluge 2 weeks back. And as usual after returning from the Big Apple, the message is being bandied that “heads will roll”. I was one of the many who had to return home from office on the Saturday 30th June showers. How I miss carrying my camera or having a camera phone on that day. It would have put any decent fellow to shame to see the state of the roads across one of the costliest neighbourhoods of the suburbs. The road has IIT Bombay and Hiranandani skirting its two sides. It also is part of the famed JVLR, a World Bank Development Project. The project has been on for ages now and am sure is much beyond any schedule that the project would have set out with. A flyover near the Powai Lake is in the middle of a construction for the last two years and has been left as it is just before the monsoons. It now resembles a huge cavern and in the time of a deluge, God save the one who gets into the middle of it. A flyover further down is in a far worse condition. The approach road is today totally devoid of any paving and is one huge crater. The drainage holes (all of about an inch in dia) have been provided almost 6 – 8 inches above ground, thereby making a flyover puddle!! I am sure none of you would have ever imagined that water logging can happen on a flyover. Atleast I for one did not imagine. And hence on the fateful Saturday while navigating home, the most precarious situation was on the flyover. The Municipal Commissioner commented in the following week that the drainage system is not geared up for the deluge. It’s good for few tens of centimetres of rain but not for few hundreds of millimetres. I remember seeing news items that stated that the famed JJ Flyover (one of the longest at 2.6 kms) had water logging too!!!

I travel everyday from the L&T Campus at Powai to the Eastern Express Highway. If one leaves office after 6 pm, one can be assured of inching traffic for atleast 4 kms across the length of Powai. Mornings are much better till about 8 am. Thereafter the traffic starts graduating from metres to inches!!

So all this really made me do a little analysis on the web. Everyone talks about charging the traveller as in the developed countries and professes from the “high seat” that the commuter should use the public transport. The first question arises here is will the high and mighty lead us by example. And taxation comes only when the infrastructure is provided. When there is a crumbling infrastructure and the babus have made their part of hay without doing anything worthwhile, what levies does the commuter pay and for what. And since the latest example for levies is Paris, here is some data about the French roads:


Area of the Country (Sq kms, in ‘000) 551.5

Well-maintained roads 952,600 km
Country tracks 600,000 km
Super-highways 11,000 km
National highways 40,000km

Speed Limits (Car & Trailer)
Built-up areas 50 kph
Major roads outside towns 50 kph
Motorways (non toll) 100 kph
Motorways (toll) 110 kph
Motorways minimum left lane 80 kph
Motorways in rain 110 kph

And here is data of roads in India:
Total: 3,383,344 km
Paved: 1,603,705 km
Unpaved: 1,779,639 km (2002)
Area of the Country (Sq kms, in ‘000): 3287.3

Speed Limits: Anybody’s guess!!!!

A look at the world data tells us where we are:
Data Source: World Bank, CIA, Press Reports
The point is not to berate or belittle my country. It is to tell these high and mighty administrators to stop comparing and emulating the west and do something worthwhile as per ideals. We can never play “catch me if you can” as by the time we reach where they are today, they would have gone much ahead. Those who are interested can read an article by Omkar Goswami in the Business World issue of 7th July. It’s available online too (and free).