PACHKA!!!

“And… there goes my money down the drain” cribbed my fussy sister. She was going through her income statement and according to her a chunk of her hard-earned money had been ‘snatched’ in the name of Income –tax. Did she say snatched away? Why the hell was she cribbing so much? Be it direct or indirect, every citizen of the country pays tax. He/she is morally and legally bound to do so. Nothing comes free. We cannot afford for the services that we need individually and hence, we pay taxes to the government so that it can provide us with services that we can use as a society. For example, travelling from one place to the other would require roads and every person cannot afford to build a road of his own. So,the government does it by pooling OUR money. But, is it written anywhere that the roads have to be well built and maintained? Our ‘able’ politicians say naaah!
The requirement of a strong infrastructural base in the development of the nation has been grossly under-estimated by the Indian government. Adding to the dismal economic planning of the government are corruption and nepotism which together have gnawed into the fundamental development of the country. The foundations of our economy are shaky and so is our growth rate. The growth of our nation is primarily driven by the services sector. And, this in turn has led to an increased number of commuters and the nation’s infrastructure refuses to take their load. A glimpse of the muddled and chaotic traffic in Mumbai should put us to shame. Cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, taxis, rickshaws, dogs and cows push around for every inch of the road as horns make a racket and brakes screech. Pukka roads have become kuccha because they were neither built nor maintained properly by the authorities and there is no new effort towards improving the miserable kuccha roads. The pachka roads (almost all roads in the cities are a blend of pukka-kuccha roads) bear crater sized pot holes which get worsened during the rainy season. All these add to the woes of the commuters and make travelling to and fro from work a nightmare. On an average, a person in a metro commutes for more than 6 hours a day due to traffic and the situation isn’t getting any better.
The inertia of the government has forced the citizens to take steps to make the roads better. A couple of days back, the Mumbai traffic police along with a few people around tried to mend the pot-holes with mud and sand! The authorities are happy with the patch-work and have not done anything to repair the roads even after knowing that the citizens have now started doing their job. The residents of a particular locality gathered their resources and cleaned the garbage littered along the roads in the vicinity of their residential area. People in smaller towns and villages are building their own roads in order to connect to the world outside. Such incidents and many more have become very common in India today and this is not something to be very proud of.
The government should realize that it's on the verge of crossing the threshold of our patience. The day is not far when people will start taking law into their hands and everything will turn upside down. It should wake up from it s slumber and start putting all its ‘thoughts’ (the plans that it has chalked out over the years) to action lest the world mock at it s inability to fulfill Vision-2020 and disappoint the children of the nation who have grown up with the dreams of an honest and developed India.