When it comes to maintenance works in India, the dominant activity is digging. Not only will you never know where or when digging will start, often you’ll never know why either. Your street can be normal one day. The next day, it can be full of holes, or even worse, partially dug up.
That’s exactly what happened to my street. A couple of months ago, I walked out onto the road, only to discover that half of it had been dug up. Not just a small part of it, but most of the road. It resulted in my two way street being turned into a one way street. Half of the street is still dug up. Except now, it’s the other half.
Apparently, the road wasn’t draining well during the monsoon. So, workers have been slowly and painstakingly raising it. Every bit of backbreaking work is performed manually, by hand, during the heat of the day
Digging huge holes.
Laying the foundation.
This whole thing is just another incident in India that’s left me mystified. I have no idea how it’s all going to come together, not to mention how much time it will take. The road is majorly uneven, and it took them two months just to raise one side of it.
Uneven road.
I took these photos when it was quiet on Sunday. However, during the week, it’s a dusty mess. There are frequent traffic jams, as people constantly disregard the No Entry sign and force their way in. I really wonder whether it will ever be a whole strip of flat road ever again!
What should be a flat two way street.
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This is one the most lucrative ways for the municipal corporations to make money. The official connive with the contractors to use inferior material for the roads. This way the road gets washed every monsoon, fresh tenders are floated and people get to amass more money. After all a man has to make a living, it provides employment to many. Apart from the fact that things are seldom done in an organized way in India. Sometimes the roads are dug by the municipality and sometimes by the telephone company. In India, whenever a project is undertaken, it is done in such a manner that it is beneficial to everyone. Plain old India jugaad I think.
Yeah, except those who are inconvenienced by the rotten state of the roads.
Just look at what happened at the new Bangalore Airport, to illustrate your point. The runway developed irreparable cracks just a few years after it was completed (despite the fact that it was supposed to last for something like 12 years). Now, they have to shut the whole runway and airport down for 8 hours a day, for the next couple of months, to fix it.
Who cares about the invisible common man. He does not ask many questions. He believes, a dug up road like many other problems in his life, are nothing but a result of bad karma in his previous birth. Why streets are dug up time and again? why garbage disposal does not take place? why there is water logging every monsoon, there are many questions but no answers. The act of digging up a road looks random to a common citizen, but there is lot that goes behind it which we do not know. Be it buying a jet aircraft, furniture for office or relaying of roads, we do not move unless somebody somewhere gets the cut and often the common man is nowhere in the picture. Similarly, when the common man gets a position of profit, he will do the same. Its Indian mentality I guess.
Now that you have talked about Airports, I should mention something good about India specially for Delhi. Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport has been ranked the second best airport in the world, according to the 2011 Airport Service Quality rankings of Airport Council International (ACI).The IGI Airport has bagged the second slot in the 25-40 MPPA category.
Seoul’s Incheon airport was placed in the first position while the Kuala Lumpur and Shenzhen airports were ranked fourth and fifth respectively.
Something is better than nothing.
Indeed, Delhi airport is quite spectacular I’ve heard. But let’s hope it goes the distance and doesn’t start falling apart after a few more years!
I hope so.
LOL , The same thing is happening in my street and it is two years and we have to drive our motorbike in the mountain mounds
2 years?! Nooooo!
Ah, I think it’s a good thing we have to move in a couple of months.
Oh yeah I’ve been noticing it for a while too, they also did the main road to lay some cables. God know home much time it will take, they are also doing a tiny section of Chandivali farm road, ironically it was the segment of the road that was the smoother and nice that they are now destroying for god know what reason! The segment going up the hill into powai is still potholed and uncomfy to ride on…sigh!
That is soooo frustrating. It just doesn’t make sense that they’d destroy a smooth road when there’s one that badly needs repairing. The state of that road is terrible.
well you are probably lucky you did not have to face the metro subway (i forgot it’s official name) construction during 2005-2007. ask anyone around and they will happily swap places with you if they have to bear another subway construction.
Mumbai has its own Metro construction going on at the moment! Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t like to live near it.
The construction is the worst! It goes on forever and makes a ton of noise. It looks really bad on your street. I feel like we can only wonder how long it’ll last!
I know you were at Bonobo last weekend… did you notice the construction in Pali Naka? The road is shredded all the way from Saint Andrew’s college to Gloria Jeans. There’s no walkway at all besides on the road with the cars and rebar. I also feel for the labourers who have set up their homes at the side of the road: the construction site is the only space their kids can play in.
No, we went via Khar, and stopped off at the Ivy wine bar on the way, so weren’t in that area.
Sounds horrible though.
lets not forget the paver block scams where perfectly good roads were resurfaced with paver blocks which would be damaged with heavy vehicles. Another interesting thing is the lack of coordination between various utilities like power, telecom and roads. They will dig the same road up thrice for each of these works instead of a joint single effort.
Ah, the joys of expat life! Once, while living in Ghana, we had a water leak right in front of our drive way. They closed off the water coming into our house, dug a trench in front of our driveway to expose the pipe, which was pouring water. Since it was Friday they went home early, and left it the way it was: no water coming into our house, the pipe pouring water into the trench, and two rickety boards across the trench so at least we could get the car in and out of the driveway. They didn’t come back until Monday.
you know there is a idiom in delhi
“yaha b khuda hai
waha b khuda hai
jaha nahi khuda hai
waha kal khod denge.”
p.s khuda means both god and digging in urdu
And then I forgot to wish you luck with your street! It will take a while!
Oh my goodness this also drives me nuts sometimes! I think for me it was the lack of warning. I’m spoiled by the big signboards at home reading “Warning: roadworks from March 18-24, expect delays and divert to XYZ road”. But those may just be there in Hindi
I saw a really interesting site called http://www.theuglyindian.com which is a social action project to fix some of India’s “tragedies of the commons” like open sinkholes, pan spit…etc. It’s a very cool project. Clearly, it doesn’t apply here with roadworks, but they made a really great point in one of their posts about how the roads and the wires under them are managed by so many different groups that approvals to dig the road, approvals to work on the road, and approvals to FILL the holes go through up to 6 different government agencies and private companies! Crazy no? Kind of explains why it takes so long for these road-diggings to be finished!
Best of luck!
Hi, Sharell! I’ve been lurking on your website for about a year and enjoying it very much. Taking this opportunity to mention that in NYC, where I am, we had endless problems with newly resurfaced streets being immediately dug up by the phone company, cable, electric, etc. The city finally started coordinating with everyone, not resurfacing until repairs were finished. Of course, with a water main break or gas leak, all bets are off.
Hi Gem, glad you left a comment at last! Welcome to the comments section.
That sounds soooo frustrating for sure! Thanks for sharing your experience. Seems like there are digging issues all over the world.
Water water everywhere, nor a drop to drink;
Holes holes everywhere, nor a site to seeing!
congrats sharell for this interesting blog
keep it up
Hi, When I was going abroad 4 months back from Mumbai I got this impression that all of the area adjacent to airport has been dug up and from my Hotel (2.5 Km from airport ) it took so long to reach airport …Thought what impression first time arriving international tourists will have of Mumbai …Sharell its tough..
Oh, I know what you mean about that. The immediate area as soon as you step out of the international airport is looking great now, and the domestic area not too bad either, but as soon as you venture past that…. construction nightmare and traffic jams. It’s really terrible.
There’s a lot to contend with in that area — both the airport development and monorail construction. Which of course will go on forever…..
lol This street totally resembles the one in front of my house in Hiranandani, which coincidentally is also dug up!
Are we neighbours?
lol probably, I just recently shifted to a bungalow at Powai park.
Oh, well we are then!! I live in one too!! 8)
Really?! lol I never had a celebrity as a neighbor.
You guys should come over sometime for coffee or something, I’d be honored.
Haha, and you still don’t have a celebrity as a neighbour!
Funny, I actually met one of the other neighbours after he read my blog too. Sure, send me a message via the contact form, and we’ll arrange something!
Another interesting “Indian” phenomenon that you may soon encounter is that the municipality will first lay of a world class road in your locality and even before you could get used to the smooth ride on them , Electricity or water guys will come and dig it again to start of some project that they would have sanctioned 10 years ago….and then again the road will stay in that dug up state until next elections!
Sigh! It’s so frustrating. These organisations need to develop coordination!
Hey Sharell,
Is this Mumbai you’re talking about in this post?
I’d like to feature it in DNA’s Around the Blog section. Do let me know if you’re okay with it at dna dot blessy at gmail dot com.
Thanks