Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: It rained heavily in Hyderabad today, the heaviest downpour (11.2 cm) so far this season, after a prolonged dry spell. The rain, however, hasn’t brought cheers to the lakhs of citizens as they are caught in yet another day of ordeal. Such ordeals have become a common feature in the state capital whenever the skies open up. And, there is no escape to the citizens from the agonies.
Luckily, I was home well before the rain started. I got a call from one of my dear friends who was stuck in his office as it began raining quite heavily. “How lucky you are to be home! I will be spending some more hours in the office as there is no way I could move out. Traffic has come to a standstill right here and it will be the same scene along my route home,” the friend told me.
I switched on the television news only to find news scrolls announcing traffic jams across the city. All the main routes, busy with rush hour traffic, have come to a grinding halt. Sometime later, another scroll informed me about the inundation of a low-lying area somewhere in the city – which is now called “Greater Hyderabad.” Another ‘breaking news’ said a man got washed away in a storm water drain (nala in local parlance).
By late night, the city had virtually been paralysed. Traffic was not moving an inch on the main roads. Even ministers and bureaucrats had a (bitter) taste of the sorry-state-of-affairs in this historic city – many of them were stranded on the roads as their cars wouldn’t move ahead.
Back home, there was a power blackout for nearly two hours. My son wanted to call the power supply office to find out why the transmission was cut. I tried to reason it could be because of a technical problem due to the heavy rain but he wasn’t willing to believe that version. “These people made it a habit to cut down power without any reason,” he argued. I couldn’t convince him further.
That’s life in Hyderabad, sorry Greater Hyderabad! I started calling it hell for sometime now, but there is no escape.
Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy boasts of spending over Rs 2700 crore on “development” of Greater Hyderabad ever since he started ruling the state five years ago. In all development works worth Rs 5500 crore were underway, he says.
As a citizen, I am fully convinced that Rajasekhara Reddy is telling blatant lies. Rather shamelessly. For, there is no “development” whatsoever in the city. Things have been deteriorating day by day, as I see them over the past few years. But still, the Chief Minister continues to promise heaven – of making a Singapore or a Shanghai of Greater Hyderabad in the next five years by spending Rs 20,000 crore.
Tall claims, with a clear on the impending elections to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.
As things stand, there is nothing to feel proud of the “greater” status that Hyderabad has acquired. Roads, including the arterial ones, are worn out; there is no real drainage system; street lighting is awful and the less said the better about the traffic.
The city police have long forgotten the essential thing called regulation and left people to suffer. Of course, civic sense is clearly lacking and traffic violators are growing by the day, thanks also to the lackadaisical policing.
When I first stayed in Hyderabad for more than 10 months in 1997, things were better. During my second stay for over a year in 2000-01, I didn’t find any deterioration but on my return to the city in 2006 I couldn’t really comprehend what’s happening on the city roads. ‘Chaos’ could be a smaller term to describe the situation in 2006 but now I need to search for superlatives to tell the tale!
No comments:
Post a Comment