Have you met a road, any road, anywhere in Mumbai that has not been dug up? If the venerable Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) were to run a contest and promise a crore of rupees, it would itself get richer by that amount. The common refrain heard across the length and breadth of the city is the unplanned, chaotic and disruptive road digging in virtually every area of the city has upended people’s lives and schedules, including travel time and possibly pollution levels too.

On an average, it takes an hour to negotiate a stretch that used to be covered in 20 minutes, many roads have been dug up in a zig-zag manner across their length in an area raising the difficulty levels in our commutes, some roads have been closed down for an unspecified length of time, a few inner roads, with paver blocks, have been opened up for who-knows-what-work but the paver blocks have not been restored to their places, roads that were perfectly healthy till the digging began are being concretised, roads are being dug deep for some under-belly upgradation work like hydraulic and other utilities – and more.

Does it have to be this way? The simple and straightforward answer is in the negative. That an old civic body, with decades of experience and budgets the size of a few state budgets, can work in such a shoddy and ad hoc manner on something as critical as the roads is shocking. That it follows no protocols to inform people or keep a channel open for feedback from road users, makes it worse. The complaints portal on its website is a joke; the less........

© Free Press Journal