This is apropos the two articles under the column Footloose in Nagpur captioned ‘Of the poor, helpless traffic cops!’ and ‘Of the lack of cultural sophistication’. The city authorities, especially the police and the NMC, have been under-staffed for past many years, and vacancy in both of the departments is nearly 50 per cent. Besides the vacancy woes, both are facing financial woes, mostly due to Maharashtra’s rising debt burden that is currently at Rs 7.11 lakh crore. Untimely political upheavals and regime changes have led to rooted mismanagement in the administration due to: 1] Half-baked policies, poor inter-departmental coordination, and frequent delays in execution of works leading to wasteful expenditure and losses. 2] Limited target oriented resolution of complaints and action against violations leading to neglect of remaining violations, and pendency of complaints/court cases.

 

These are the reasons for the evident disparity between the official records and the ground reality, ill-maintained civic amenities, and average maintenance of law and order throughout the State, including Nagpur. Failure of State leadership to rein in the underbred/reckless lot of politicians who themselves ‘support’ inaction towards violators of law has set a bad precedent for the society. It is the cabal of such politicians and a few corrupt bureaucrats which collectively undermines the planning and administration throughout the state. In fact, they use timed violations akin to the ancient ‘Ashwamedh Horse’ to dare the authorities often for displaying their ‘political power’ before the public. As an interim measure to stem this rot, citizen participation in enforcement of law should be reinitiated via incentivised app-based reporting of all violations including traffic violations. The high resolution CCTVcam networks could be made vandal-proof and expanded to cover virtually every nook and corner of the city.