A New Year wishlist for Chennai

Disclaimer: I have referred to Mumbai as Bombay and Madras as Chennai. This is intentional. However, this is not hypocrisy. This is the way people generally talk about the two cities. Just yesterday, I heard someone talking of a Bombay-Chennai flight. I'll be happy to have someone enlighten me on this issue.

Here's my new year wish-list for Chennai

1. Get a good drainage system - In 2009, please do not let rains that are hardly 10% of what one gets in Bombay paralyze the city and let the politicians have a field day offering relief when a good drainage system would prevent any of this from happening in the first place. It's time civic officials went to Bombay and learnt!

Picture: A flooded street in suburban Chennai (28 Nov 2008) after Cyclone Nisha {Note that the rains were not even as much as Bombay usually receives}

2. Build flyovers, not underpasses - Do not sanction any new underpasses (famously called subways) to connect either side of the railway tracks. Sanction flyovers. A little rain and people living in on the wrong side of the railway tracks such as West Mambalam and Nanganallur are cut off from the rest of the place.


3. Build wide roads, free of potholes - Hope the corporation of Chennai is listening. I repeat. Build wide roads, free of potholes. If you cannot, at least do not call them 'High Roads'. It really sucks. Call it just a road.

Picture: An manhole on the arterial Sardar Patel Road in Chennai

4. Implement the law on auto-drivers - This one's last on my list because I know the impossibility and the impracticality of such a suggestion. But, a faint hope in my heart makes me root for this. Bring the auto-drivers, who are a law unto themselves only in Chennai to book. Send them to Bombay to see their counterpart return the Re 1 change!

Chennai's first grade separator

This Sunday, on Diwali-eve, Chennai got its first grade separator - at Kathipara. This was a project marred by delays. Originally due to open in April 2007, one portion connecting GST Road and Inner Ring Road was opened in March 2008. All arms were thrown open on this Sunday i.e. October 26, 2008 after an inauguration by CM Karunanidhi.

When I went past it on Tuesday morning, I could clearly be seen that the project had been completed in haste and inagurated as a face-saving measure. There were absolutely no finishing touches and the grade separator didn't look brand new from any angle. When I traveled across the GST-IRR grade separator in March, I had seen the poor finishing touches on that stretch. Then, I had hoped that all would be set right when the project was completed fully. But, that was not to be.

Leave alone finishing touches. People can manage with shoddy work. But how can people manage without signboards? On Tuesday morning, I saw vehicles coming on the wrong side, for there were no signboards to indicate the routes. Grade-separators can be confusing. In fact, rade-separators without proper signboards are like death-traps. Indeed, that was what happened. The next day, I read in The Hindu that the grade separtor had claimed its first victim. (http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/29/stories/2008102958550300.htm). As I said earlier, grade-separators must have proper signages, more so, when people haven't been exposed to such stuff before. But then, that's not always the case. Especially, if it's Chennai.

Even now, I fail to understand the delay in the project. The Hindu claimed it was "contractual problems and escalation in the cost of raw materials". Whatever they say, the delay is unexplainable. Tamil Nadu has a lot of clout in the UPA government at the center. TN MPs have plum ministries including Surface Transport and Highways. What prevented Mr T. R. Balu, the Highways Minister from using his good offices for the benefit of his people, many of whom spent a lot of time waiting at the construction site morning and evening due to traffic jams? Fine, even if he didn't want to appear prejudiced towards his home state, why should he make statements about the project being 'ahead of schedule'? If you don't believe me, read up at http://www.hindu.com/2005/09/26/stories/2005092614620300.htm. Now, can someone explain?

In Hyderabad

On one of my early days in Hyderabad, as I boarded a city transport bus and looked about for the conductor, I was surprised when a fat, round woman in a grey sari with a grey overcoat gruffly asked me to buy a ticket in Telugu using the English word for ticket. As I handed her the change and collected my ticket, I thought that I had met a rare species - a woman conductor (or shall we say conductress?).
But, soon I was to be proved wrong. On four consecutive bus rides spanning over three days, I met the so-assumed rare species, making it no more rarer than the male counterpart.

On a weekend in Secunderabad, I was again surprised when two middle-aged women in maroon saris, whistles in their mouth, worked as parking lot assistants on PG Road. One of them whistled hard as she helped a larger car squeeze into a parking slot.