Over the last few months, some central city areas have been witnessing civic works, the quality of which seems to pre-date the high standards of Mohenjo Daro construction standards. This relates to the construction and restoration of small drains on 25 feet roads. One presumes this is to channel rain water in the interior neighbourhoods and onto the main drains.
So, why is this drain project symptomatic of the way we get our civic projects all wrong? For starters, like the Metro over-ground alignment on MG road, the project landed on our collective roads out of the blue. There was no warning, or a notice of the works planned and why it was necessary. One fine day, workers descended and started ripping apart the existing stones over the British era drains and started excavating the earth to widen the original drains. A cursory look showed that the earlier drains were nicely done and all it needed was desilting.
The entire exercise lacked scientific planning. The digging was haphazardly done at varied points instead of going about it linearly. Houses and Apartments randomly lost access to their parking lots since the plot access was ripped up mindlessly. There was no one to escalate the challenges on the ground since the officials in charge have never been spotted. And to add insult to injury, the lovely, earlier era top cover stones were taken away, presumably for its resale value.
What came in place of the earlier drain set up was heart breaking. Where earlier there was scope for ground water charging through a porous base, our twenty first century planners decided it needed to be filled with concrete. So, we had concrete along the side walls and at the base thereby ruling out any sustainable ground water recharge locally. There was worse to come. Ugly cement drain covers and to add insult to injury, in many cases the height was over 6 inches from the road level, making it difficult to open the car doors and access to parking lots. With the drains raised, the slope from many of the houses now eat into the already small road widths.
This drain work is indicative of how badly we plan our public civil works. It’s a functional disaster, an aesthetic eyesore and earns the distrust of citizens who fear such projects are designed to skim off the taxes paid by them.
V. Ravichandar, Urbanist
@ravichandar
Author is an urban expert,who calls himself the Patron Saint of Lost Causes