Infrastructure Wo(w)es!

Been a while since I blogged. Guess was caught up with too many things (usual excuse!). Btw wish you all a very happy new year. Like every year this year also I am not taking any new year resolution.:-)
I travel for about an hour to work everyday. Our company bus takes the ECR or OMR route in Chennai. For the uninitiated, the OMR is propagated as the IT highway of Chennai! Roughly from Madya Kailash Temple to Siruseri and further beyond! We talk of growth in the IT industry, foreign investments, mergers, acquisition, India (superpower in 2020) and the like. We rant and rave about the IT boom and the subsequent advantages that it offers! But we all also end up discussing the major issue that we face going forward. Infrastructure.

Traveling in these roads everyday just makes me think. We have a good stretch of road till about SRP tools junction(again for non-chennaites this is like a small stretch when you compare the IT Highway). The government has taken care to lay the road, build state of the art medians, lights, bus stops and even have paintings and statues in this stretch. They made a big hue and cry of this inuagration though the completion date was as usual well past the deadline.

You cross this stretch and then reality hits you. We have an excuse of a road/half done construction blocks lying everywhere, mud piled up and as your bus roars past all this , all you get is dust on your face! I am truly trying to understand why does it take so long to build a road? This is not even an initiative from the scratch. This initiative was already started contracts handed out but there is just no road. Sometimes makes me think if democracy is the road block here. Can’t help but compare with China. You see the infrastructure you would be amazed! I visited Hong Kong recently and you need to see the infrastructure to actually believe it! With so many IT companies along the road can’t something be done. These roads also pose more than one safety hazard for the commuters.

I have heard people here compare this with Bangaluru and be contented that we still have not come to that state. But is the solution? Solution to this would involve changing fundamentally the way India operates. Ok, Now I am talking of utopia!!!!
Elected politicians and corporation council members should behave like directors of a publically held company aware that the share holders(in this case the common man) can question them if they do not fulfill their duties! Its well known that immense lobbying happens to get these contracts , that’s the system. But after that the least you can do is implement the contract without squandering any more public wealth! As a tax payer in this country I think I can atleast expect this.
What is the solution? Do any of you have any bright ideas??