Wake up and smell the coffee

The early morning cuppa refreshes and rejuvenates you for the day ahead. The mandatory accompaniment to it is of course the morning newspaper. Most of us still buy a proper printed braodsheet newspapers, while some of us like me have taken to reading it off the net (at least till the time the service is free, at least). So a look at a balmy Thursday morning's headlines, engineered to make your blood boil because of the mismanagement of Public funds on such an immense scale by what we deem to be the goverment.

Bankrupt after 29 years is a story of West Bengal, which spends more than it earns, and fritters away its prosperity (State GDP growth over 7%). While this is the story of West Bengal, even the other "prospersous" states, including Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana etc. are not far behind in their profligacy. In fact, it is by now common knowledge that if you sell anything to a state government, you might stop hoping to get paid. Consider it to be a donation. (http://businessstandard.com/common/storypage.php?storyflag=y&leftnm=lmnu5&leftindx=5&lselect=1&chklogin=N&autono=220862)

Meanwhile, as the first link maight tell you, the Public Distribution system is in shambles now. A bucket full of holes, where the money you pour in is hijacked by numerous unintended recipients, it is a symbol of the rot that governance in this country has become: a self-perpetuating monstrosity. It is perhaps the acknowledgement of this fact which has made Rang de Basanti (http://www.indiafm.com/movies/review/12493/) to be the hit it is today. Of course it is difficult to agree with the means that those boys took to deal with the problem. But as Pramod Mahajan remarked on an NDTV show, politicians have been killed on screen on flimsier pretexts.

And the poster boy of modern civil engineering in the country, the Delhi Metro? It must surprise most that the system is running at just 20% of the projected capacity...that's almost as bad as the much derided Kolkata Metro. And that was a result of irrationally skewed projections of the traffic that the Delhi Metro was expected to carry...about 21lakh passengers a day, when the DTC buses in the city carry only about 25 lakh people a day! What optimistic ewxuberance made the planners think that they would put the entire existing Public transport system out of reckoning, especially when it is infinitely more convenient over short distances. The Delhi Metro will be roughly 4 times its current size by 2020, but perhaps its time to ponder whether it is worth the investment.
(http://businessstandard.com/common/storypage.php?storyflag=y&leftnm=lmnu5&leftindx=5&lselect=1&chklogin=N&autono=220925)

After all, most metro train systems in the world run at a loss. So is there any point in deliberately bleeding yourself dry?

What is to blame of course is the perverse nature of political decision making which concentrates on earning short term brownie points for immediate electoral gains. (Delhites must remember both Madanlal Khurana and Shiela Dixit rushing in to claim credit at the inauguration of the metro with an eye onthe polls). Town planning requires vision and innovation, both sadly absent from the powers that be in our country.

A knot of tangled hair clogging the drain...Welcome to the undirected, unmanageable, irresponsible urban jungle! Vision 2020!