The project of digging long, deep trenches on either side of the main Sector Road in front of the Sushant Vyapar Kendra, which started almost 5 months ago, thereby creating tri-angular mounds and heaps like a long, mountain range, has, like it usually happens, surpassed the deadlines several times. “This work has taken a time longer than estimated, as we weren’t expecting such heavy rains” which is a blatant untruth. The driver of the excavator-bulldozer, taken into confidence, though relates a totally different story…
Be that as it may, this project, which was designed to be flagged off as a ‘Green Belt Initiative’ has, over the time, weathered tumultuous rigmaroles, and ended up being transformed into a ‘Utility Belt’, of which, the need to closely examine the sanctity and the utility thereof must arise. The Utility Belt, commands a clear departure from its ‘Green’ angle as it has cruelly uprooted many trees, big or small and, whatever has come in its way, therefore presenting itself as a big impediment to the traffic and the pedestrians. “Due to rains, the earth that we dug out has slipped back into the ditches and that’s what brings us back to the beginning,” says the driver.
The project now envisages acting like a conduit to carry wastages in big pipelines and preparing a route to flow off the useless stuff, (bio-degradable or not) and, alongside, it is being engineered to accommodate a specially insulated pipeline for internet and Wi-Fi. This is the reason behind them calling it as a ‘Utility Belt”
This project was wrongly timed (they could have foreseen the monsoons were around the corner) and ill-conceptualized – the worst is that its completion may again linger on for a couple of months before it sees the light of the day. Why can’t our administration be a little more conscious about what when and how it should be launching its projects? And why does the normal janata have to suffer due to its failures to plan?
