The Priorities Of Politicians
By Vidyadhar Date
30 November, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Some bureaucrats in the state government in Mumbai were upset recently because the new chief minister Prithviraj Chavan chose to hold official meetings in Sahyadri guest house in Malabar Hill instead of in Mantralaya. It is more conveninent for him as he is staying in the guest house as Ashok Chavan, his predecessor, has not vacated Varsha bungalow.
True, Mantralaya is more convenient for the bureaucrats. But think of this. They have air conditioned cars and the journey to Malabar Hill is quite pleasant past Marine Drive and short.
Compared to the daily plight of millions of commuters in Mumbai and elsewhere the bureaucrats are having a joy ride.
For common people,apart from the problem of commuting for hours and miles in overcrowded, humiliating conditions, the real problem in Mumbai and many other places is walkability. People just need a proper access to walk to their neighbourhoods. It is as simple as that. But even this basic amenity is denied to people.
In a single year 328 people have been run over so far at one single railway station, Vikhroli in Mumbai, while crossing the railway tracks. People are helpless as there is no footover bridge despite repeated demands for years and on November 22 furious residents stopped trains for two hours as four people were run over by trains in a single day.
Yet, the priorities of politicians are entirely different.. The first thing the new chief minister did on taking over charge was to finalise approval for a second airport at Navi Mumbai to meet the demand of the upper class and the builder lobby which has already grabbed a lot of land in anticipation of this project.
Mr Chavan predecessor, Ashok Chavan, as soon as he took over, gave sanction to construction of helipads on top of high rise buildings .
At the same time the political elite is insensitive to public transport.
It is not surprising that Mumbai, India’s financial capital with all its resources, lags so sadly behind Ahmedabad in the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system. Ahmedabad’s BRT has won international acclaim within a year of its starting while Mumbai’s BRT is not even in the planning stage.
Neglect of the BEST (Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport) Undertaking is the main reason. To some extent, the undertaking is being used to serve not commuters but other interests. Though the BEST bus depots do not have enough space for their own fleet of buses, the authorities are selling away large chunks of the prime land. In fact the BEST should be acquiring more land for its depots to meet the growing need for public transport in one of biggest and most densely populated cities in the world.
The more shocking part is that the land development rights of the depot of the BEST Undertaking in the upscale Cuffe Parade area have been bartered for providing luxurious houses to retired army and navy chiefs, politicians and bureaucrats. The BEST is at the centre of the major scandal concerning the 33-storey Adarsha cooperative housing society building which has come up next to the bus depot.
The bus depot does not have enough space and many buses are parked on the road outside as I saw for myself recently.
Hundreds of BEST bus drivers and conductors are hired on a daily or temporary basis which severely affects its services. Severe shortage of mechanics has meant that hundreds of buses wait for repairs in bus depots while commuters are forced to travel in overcrowded buses and subjected to noisy advertisements on closed circuit television screens or vulgar Hindi film dances and songs.
BEST bus shelters appear to be designed to facilitate display of advertisements rather than the comfort of commuters. The new mass produced steel bus shelters are narrow and confined and inconvenient in every way, one cannot sit down or stand properly. In the evening diesel generators chained to the bus depots and meant to illuminate the advertisements emit irritating noise and odour making life miserable for commuters.
In neighbouring Thane region, which is witnessing explosive urban growth, the municipally run bus depots resemble a junk yard as a number of buses are gathering dust and lying unrepaired.
BEST will be getting more buses under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission programme but does not have enough space to park them. It is building two bus depots in the Weserrn suburbs to accommodate more buses. This makes it decision to sell the land of other depots to commercial interests all the more controversial. Some space at the bus depots can be easily used for providing basic amenities for washrooms. But this seems a far cry. Sanitation facilities even in the railway stations in Mumbai are inadequate and filthy.
The BEST is widely thought to be the best in the country. But that is partly because bus services in other cities are so much worse. Nothing shows the inhuman conditions in which people travel in buses in Mumbai than the recent agitation of the BEST staff in support of their demand that only 10 people should be allowed to stand in a bus as it becomes difficult for the conductors to issue tickets to all in an overcrowded bus.
Ironically, this has met with opposition from the management as well as commuters. So inadequate are the services in many sectors that people would rather travel stand in inhuman, overcrowded conditions rather than not travel at all.
