I frequently drove to Nashik at least once a month for the past 18 months because we established a development centre there. The Nashik centre is now 30+ people and is focused on project delivery. Since the Nashik centre expanded, the only change in its infrastructure has been:
- One toll booth at Bhiwandi was removed, which was creating congestion.
- A two-way bridge which was under construction has been completed on one side.
- Patch work has been done on the Nashik toll road after the rains.
Every trip requires a user to pay ₹140/- as one way toll (35 at Mumbai exit and 105 for Nashik). For this toll, you basically get one half of a bridge completed and patch work.
There's a turn-off at Bhiwandi junction for Kalyan, where an empty desolate flyover lies uncompleted. Approaching this junction is a nightmare, especially during peak hours.
The road is riddled with potholes, some of them, which would make the Moon blush and requires traffic police to man this continuously. It is not uncommon to have traffic snarls and queues exceeding 3/4 kms. On of one my recent return trips from Nashik, the cop stopped me as I was almost about to cross the junction. I rolled down my window and asked him to let me go, but he said the traffic from Mumbai is backed up for several kilometers. He was wearing a mask and at 50+ looked much older than his age. At 8 pm, he mentioned that he had been on the job since 8 am and had virtually no break. To add to my discomfort, he asked me to roll up my glass so that I could avoid the pollution. The amount of dust and pollution is overwhelming for the average person; it's even worse for a traffic cop who deals with it daily.
The politician, the bureaucrat and the contractor are all smug in their respective places, it is really the last line i.e. the cop who is suffering and has to bear the consequences of the lethargy in our system. We accept a 2-year delay in building a bridge as par for the course as the direct impact is not very visible. It is the people travelling who suffer interminable delays: the cop trying to manage the traffic, the trucker who will not see his child, the vendor who can't go home etc. The system does not really care about the common person.
Quite often at work, I find the same malaise, what if I am 10 minutes late to work, what if there's a spelling mistake etc. These supposedly small mistakes become part of your being and are difficult to change. Millennials tell me they work hard, but the discipline is poor. These same millennials will approve bridges and projects and then say it's ok for them to be delayed (not that the previous generations were better) and instead of the progressing, we seem to be slowing down.
The next time you are asked to deliver a project on time, think about the cop who is standing for 12 hours every day directing traffic inhaling dust and toxic fumes, because you could not deliver the project on time. They say charity begins at home, but I would think integrity begins at home too. It is what we teach our children that they will take forward, but it looks like we are failing on this count.
We all need to learn, young and old, to keep to our commitments and ensure people deliver. If not, we will end up blaming the system, when the reality is we are the system.
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