The newspapers are full of reports on Chief Minister’s visit to the Infrastructure and Transport Project sites in Bombay yesterday.
Yours truly plays a small miniscule role in the these projects. And while she is neither quoted nor even visible to the most observant eye in the reports that were flashed out, she remains passionate about roads and infrastructure.
We were part of the Chief Minister’s long tail of ‘other cars’ yesterday. As consultants, nobody really cares about you, and you sort of hop and skip on your two feet hoping somebody will finally figure out a way to make politicians understand the importance of roads! And then you have the media who take the politically correct stand and don’t understand the I of Infrastructure. They ask the vaguest of questions, make arbitrary statements, and attempt investigative journalism. No offense to anyone in the media, but they know the ‘correct’ statements to make, but not necessarily the rational ones, and further, they don’t really read up on anything to understand the issues of urban centres, especially industrial belts.
So yesterday, we were part of the train of cars that drove along the Jogeshwari Vikhroli Link Road. This is a flyover that is along the expressway. It’s coming along pretty well. Notice the height and the build of the pillars. Very different from the standard Bombay construction.
Next let me show you a picture of a demolition site. Now, contrary to popular opinion these people are not asked to live on the streets. There are transit camps, and then they are resettled in flats. If you look properly at the snap you’ll notice most of the tenements that are demolished are of poor construction quality and are on these tracts of land without legal right. Further, there is another reason for their demolition. They stand in the Corridor of Impact for Infrastructure projects. You don’t demolish them, you can’t build!
And this is where people have been resettled and rehabilitated. Needless to say, yesterday there was a mela in this area. But the construction quality is extremely good in most of the sites. We do have issues of maintenance coming up, but they’re focusing on training members of cooperative housing societies to deal with those issues.
More photographs and insights later. Early in the morning, before setting off for the field, this is all I can handle!
So long, and thanks for all the err… whatever!
