Roads to Death

One of my colleagues died in a road acccident last week. This is not the first known person i knew died in a road accident. Such incidents make one ponder on the ephemeral nature of life. India has one of the highest rates on road accident related deaths. As a country we have become insensitive to these deaths. We feel sad, ignore and move on to live another day. The state i come from Andhra Pradesh has the dubious distinction of topping the charts in the country. India as a whole i guess is number two in the world rankings.

Who is responsible the citizen or the state ? Yes as citizens we lack basic road driving etiquette in India, we are not considerate to pedsetrians,chidren and the old. Every one is in a hurry to reach their destinations. So the citizen is surely at fault. But does the state have a role ? I think it has an even important role in laying the law and regulating and providing the necessary infrastructure. Every state including the central government have failed miserably in getting their act together with respect to road safety.

Talking about law India has laws for everything so no problems with that, but what about regulation. Polieman standing at street corners and cutting traffic tickets is not regulation. The aspect of road safety needs to be addressed in a wholistic way. 1) Infrastucture (Roads and grade separtors, lane markings, functioning street lights and traffic lights) 2) Licensing regulations 3) Continuous education to drivers 4) Related Infrastructure ( Foot over bridges for perdestrians etc) and enough Manpower to monitor this very important function.

I guess the government knows about the above requirements i discussed above, infact they have experts in traffic engineering so they know better on what needs ot be done. What gets the goose is what are all these Ministers of Roads and Buildings, Bureucrats and Engineers doing about roads and safety of citizens using the roads.

I am sure that when a Roads and buidings minister goes to work every day he must be seeing main roads with out lane markings, potholes, broken road separators, no zebra crossings, dysfunctional traffic lights etc what does he do once he is in office. Does he ignore the plight of the poor citizen or what do these guys do actually?

We citizens we are under the strangle hold of governments inaction and will continue to suffer for all its faliabilities.

Huge Incompetence

Lack of regulation and transparency has been a bane for India's growth for long, this is true in a lot of areas in our nation's functioning.

Look at the way we execute our National highway and state highway projects. We see roads being laid alomost every year and back under repair within a few months. What do the contracts specify interms of quality, longevity of these roads ? Is the issue in terms of quality standards or collusion between contrators and public works officials.The later is definitely the reason. Do these engineers signoff the quality of execution of these roads then why are they not being held accountable ? Are the quality standards poor then why not adopt higher standards. If the rates offered by the govt for laying these roads are not competitive they need to be relooked at too.

Road works are a big money spinning machine for corrupt Govt engineers, they keep issuing tenders and keep the money engone running. I am not sure if the National Highway Authority is doing anything on this front. Shame on us we cant even lay proper roads. Solution is review of quality standards, transparent online tendering system and strong regulatory body to check quality standards.

Coming to the nest topic - blame the monsoon for every thing. While it is true that we are by far dependent on monsoon for our drinking water and agricultural needs it is also time to take a step back and evaluate how we are managing our water resources. Our Planning commission by now must have come with volumes on how we should manage our water resources and projects that need to be taken up to conserve water.

The problem is not so much with the volume of water but how we use it to meet our agricultural needs. Vast areas in our rice and sugarcane belts across the country are flooded with water every year which is a sheer waste of the natural resource. There might be challenges in implementation of programs like drip irrigation and other technologies but did we try enough, for success stories look at Isreal they have done it. Again lack of political will and strong regulatory body is the reason. Look at the way state governments look askance when thousands of us drive borewells and damage the environment, poor regulation is again the reason.

It is the responsibility of the Government to provide basic necessaties to its citizens and unfortunately our governments both at state and central fail to do this. Wake up India.