NO MATTER the new (?) increasing numbers of cement roads in Nagpur and their paved sidewalks, the first impression one gets while moving around town is that the city-roads suffer from bad maintenance -- countless pot-holes, countless water puddles, countless street corners needing urgent repair, countless boulders and cement blocks at critical turns on roads ... ! There are countless spots on different city-roads where people keep tripping and hurting themselves and their two-wheelers or even four-wheelers. How does one look at all these? This question assumes much importance against the proud assertion of Union Minister that good roads make a country rich (when he cites the example of the roads in the United States).

 

The loosefooter does not know if he should call Nagpur a rich city or not-so-rich a city. But he is quite sure that bad roads in the city give an impression of a poorly-managed city, all right. How do the people in ruling class -- in political arena or in civic administration -- account for such an invariable impression? True, a lot many roads in the city have been converted into cemented passage-ways -- with their side-walks having been paved neatly by interlocking cement tiles. Yet, even those superficially good-looking roads do not actually promise being truly good ones. For, with even scanty rains, they become flowing rivers of rainwater that does not have outlets to get into the ground. Even in many posh areas of the city, the civic authorities have not been able to make proper sense out of so-called new roads. For, in many such places, the roads get immediately flooded. In many places, underground sewer lines somehow throw up filth from their guts. In many places, the people have built houses etc right on the cement slabs they have constructed covering the stream -- and the authorities do not seem to mind all that illegal and incorrect activity. A person moving around town also comes across heaps of uncleared garbage at countless places -- sending out a worse stench in wet conditions. Cumulatively, all this does not give one an impression of a well-managed city, to say the least. Much to the contrary, the city does give an impression that its civic authorities have not been able to rev up their efficiency to desired levels on most counts.

 

The loosefooter does not like to keep pointing to faults and defects. He is quite a positive thinker. Yet, he also cannot escape seeing and sensing bad civic management of the city. Moving around town often brings up massive evidence of Nagpur being a badly-managed place which happens to be Maharshtra’s Second Capital. In this very column, the loosefooter has written several articles eulogising the city’s beauty spots and strengths and points of honour. He has chosen to remain in Nagpur all his life despite many career opportunities elsewhere in the country and the world -- just because he calls the place ‘my beloved Nagpur’. But when he points to the city’s faults and failures, he does so only out of that sense of belonging, that sense of being the son of Nagpur. He is sure, the fellow Nagpurians understand his lament. n