You may have never actually seen a horse cart with the cart before the horse moving on the street. In practice, too, no one has because it won’t go beyond a few metres without toppling or veering off the path. Physics proves it, and nobody with a sane mind would try it, knowing the inconvenience involved in correcting the obvious result. Common sense prevails. That is why it has remained only an adage to press the point on what happens when things are turned around illogically – the lack of common sense.
And yet, it is happening. You may not want to call it the “cart-before-the-horse”, but it is pretty much like that. In the so-far-prevailing style of governance, the policies, decisions and implementations – at worst, the lack of them – force people to mutely endure the poor quality of services and utilities, or their very absence.
That happens because the cart is indeed placed before the horse, and not the other way round. In other words, we have a top-to-bottom system of governance (the cart before the horse) instead of the bottom-top system (the horse before the cart). Simply put, if people cannot drive governance and policies, but allow the government and the authorities to do so without accountability, we end up like the moving cart-before-the-horse spectacle that is bound to topple, or veer off the path.
“But then we have neither toppled nor veered off the path,” one may wager.
Unfortunately, we already have! And the state capital Bengaluru is the living example – albeit analogically – of a toppled cart placed before the horse while trying to move at great speed.
What else can one call Bengaluru, if not a toppled cart, with the heap of a mess that this city has been turned into? The debilitating traffic congestion, severe flooding in several areas during heavy rains, poor road conditions, inefficient waste management, poor pedestrian infrastructure, encroached lakes... it is all there to be seen and experienced.
Take the government’s call to shun private vehicles and take public transport instead. The government wants people to walk or cycle instead of using private vehicles. But are there footpaths worth being called so in the city? Where are the cycle tracks to safely pedal one’s way around the city? Where do senior citizens walk? In the parks? How do they get there? By risking their lives in the absence of footpaths?
Easy mobility is a big problem to be achieved in Bengaluru. Consider the effort of reaching Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) at Devanahalli from Bengaluru, to which it belongs. KIA became operational in 2008. The city’s first Metro line became operational between MG Road and Byappanahalli in October 2011.
But even after 15 years, the KIA is not connected to the city via Metro; whereas Mumbai, which officially commenced commercial Metro operations in June, 2014, already has direct connectivity to both the terminals of its Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport.
All this is happening because the government so far has lacked holistic urban management while finding long-term solutions elusive by a large margin. And now we are left facing the inconvenience of correcting it all. In fact it is not just an inconvenience, but a Herculean effort.
That is so because we the people have allowed the government to run the cart-before-the-horse model of governance without accountability or transparency, and the citizens cannot find a strong enough voice to convey to the government who the prime stakeholders in a democracy are – the people themselves.
Except for a handful of experts and activists who scream till they go blue in their faces for corrections and what appropriate services and utilities are required for citizens’ convenient living, there is not as much as a collective whimper to jolt the government into realising where things have gone wrong.
Not a day goes by when most of the 1.5 crore people of Bengaluru who experience civic inconveniences do not curse the government under their breath for the mess Bengaluru is in. Besides, indifference has made many not even care if it got worse.
Now, there are some signs of hope. Karnataka’s new chief minister DK Shivakumar has assured that under him governance would be people-centric. But people on their part need to take up the role of the stakeholders that they rightfully are, and set the agenda for the government while holding it accountable. A bottom-top system would be possible only with people’s direct involvement in their respective localities.
The time to begin is now. The polls to the five corporations under the Greater Bengaluru Authority are set to be held before August, and aspiring corporators are already creating their voter base.
It is time to make demands at the local level, and ensure that the government meets them, because inclusive quality civic services at the ward level are the basis of a democratic welfare state.
No more succumbing to the “adjust maadi” accommodative attitude. It’s time to place the horse before the cart and whip it on the rump to set it going on the right path.