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Our
chalta hai attitude towards civic problems must change
Is
it my imagination or do the rains get more ferocious with each passing
year? Last week’s downpour was of course at crisis levels with
reports claiming a record high since 1974. The authorities were
as usual, ill prepared and much has been written about the failure
of the Disaster Management Plan and the high death toll so far reveals
how serious the consequences can be. But we do not need a crisis
to show up our inadequacies. Even under normal circumstances there
is a glaring lack of foresight and preparedness. Last month early
showers rendered the subway leading to the Santacruz airport unusable
on a busy morning.
It
took an hour longer than usual to cross over to the east. A passenger
would have missed his flight. At present a massive ditch has opened
up on the road outside the Bandra Fire Exchange below the new flyover.
It forms every year. It is a junction increasingly used for traffic
heading to and from the Western suburbs. Will anything be done about
it? Of course not.
The
cars will continue to inch their way around it causing jams and
delays and foul tempers. Every year people fall seriously ill. And
even on days when the rain is in a mild mode one finds stretches
of road submerged in gutter water. It is easy to blame the government
and our crumbling infrastructure as we should. But the truth is
that as a society we have a fatalistic. And nowhere is this more
apparent than in the lack of information. Last year, a couple of
colleagues and I were about to drive from Washington D.C. to New
York when news came in of disruptions caused by an unexpected deluge.
Within
seconds phone calls had been made to the relevant departments and
someone was on the net getting details of routes and bottlenecks.
Now one can be dismissive of rich countries and their resources
but the one thing we have no dearth of is media outlets. Fifty television
channels, newspapers, web sites, radio - and not one place where
you can expect an reliable hourly account of conditions in the city.
But why blame the media - even the chief minister confessed to have
been unaware that the trains had stopped running till reporters
failed to turn up for a briefing on the day of the downpour. A few
days ago this newspaper also carried a report on the poor quality
of information on the BMC’s official website. Perhaps this
is a hangover from the days of Indira Gandhi when every movement
was a state secret to be revealed under pain of death. Why else
would routine information that could help citizens plan their moves
be so hard to come by?
The
truth is that the one thing guaranteed to make a bad situation unbearable
is the feeling that one doesn’t know what is going on. The
spate of violent incidents at railway stations a couple of years
ago amply proved that. There is so much that can be done to correct
this. By the authorities. By private parties. In the early days
of cable an operator in the Vasant Kunj area in Delhi was routinely
approached by local agencies such as the police to flash news of
wanted criminals and so on and he willingly obliged to the point
that when the colony taps ran dry residents besieged him demanding
to know why the news hadn’t been conveyed on cable.
Change
however would require first of all a transformation in the way information
is perceived. Information is crucial. Information is to be shared.
People want information. This last is for the veejays and deejays
that have invaded our lives. Cut out the giggles and the countdowns.
Tell us things that matter to us as a city.
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