I returned to Puri after a gap of 45 years. That included all my service life when I was working abroad as a member of the diplomatic service with occasional spells in Delhi. The town, in my reckoning, holds amazing potential and could draw millions of tourists, pilgrims, lay visitors to its fold. Besides, the Bay of Bengal, on whose shore the town rests languidly, has its own allure, as one of the prime beaches of the country.
Then what ails Puri? Why has it not developed as it should have? At least millions of pilgrims pass through Puri annually. In fact, the festival of Nabakalebar, the unique assumption of new bodies of the deities once every 12 years, sees a quantum jump in footprint. In the last Nabakalebar, which took place after 19 years in July last year with hundreds of crores of rupees filtering into Puri’s coffers through various agencies, you would think that a town of 15 sq kms and a population of two lakhs would have got a complete makeover. Sadly, that was not to be.
Except for NH-203, a 62-km stretch linking Puri with the State Capital and to the Chilka lake hamlet of Satpada on NH 203 B, nothing much by way of infrastructure is really visible. No glittering malls, no entertainment worth the name, no well-lit roads except the Bada Danda (Grand Road), no proper signage, no tourist map indicating Puri’s fabulous spiritual treasures though it is the most important of the four sacred dhams consecrated by Adi Shankaracharya. A brand new bus stop, built seven kms before Puri on the national highway, with `70 crores sunk, stands as a monumental waste of public funds.
Puri still lacks a proper sewerage system, new pipelines are being laid all over the town for a decade or so and have not been properly functional. Parts of the Bada Danda are being dug again to lay pipelines, in time for the forthcoming Car Festival this year. And this has become an annual ritual for the last 25 years - parts of the Grand Road being dug to address the massive water overflow. No engineers can ever fix this perennial problem for which money is sanctioned year after year!
To top it all, despite the hoopla of Swachh Bharat, for which funds have been specifically targeted for Puri, the town presents a despicable sight of mud, slush, puddles of muddy water, concrete debris and garbage heaped all over, despite the daily sight of sweepers swaying the sand and dust from the middle of the road to its side. And of course, there is manual scavenging still prevalent.
In addition to Puri being the only town from Odisha selected to join the HRIDAY scheme of the Central Government in January 2015 for preservation of its cultural heritage and infrastructural development, it has recently found a place among the 10 iconic religious centres of India for Government of India funding, to spur infrastructure growth and civic facilitation. What an irony that crores of rupees sanctioned for Puri’s development just disappear, with no accountability, no RTI, no social audit, no questions asked and therefore no answers given. Is there a vigilante citizenry in this town? I wonder and look around for answers with none, alas none, coming.
If you walk on the pavement meant along the New Marine Drive from the Digbarani bend to Swargadwar, you could get offloaded at least half a dozen times due to the sheer numbers and messiness of the walkers-by, with hawkers occupying the pavement as if strollers did not matter. The less said about congestion on the road, which happens to be one of the most visited in the town, the better. So even though parking is not allowed on the road, at any given moment of the evening when traffic is at its highest there could be at least 12 to 15 vehicles parked on that one kilometre stretch, even as a solitary police vehicle keeps patrolling. Worse, in times of rain, the same road becomes a huge flow of filthy garbage water emanating from all the hotels lined up.
A small sea-side town, which should have been the jewel of the state, has bloated up unseemly with a profusion of visitors having surged in recent times, with road and rail connectivity opened up, and yet no infrastructural development to absorb the ever rising numbers. A nonchalance is at play as the town seems to get into action from one Rath Yatra to the other, with citizens of Puri being the worst victims of the bureaucratic apathy, while the hapless pilgrims, who have to render their obeisance to Lord Jagannath, consider the visit a one-time experience of their lives. And not a great one at that.
(The writer is a retired Ambassador. Email: malay.mishra55@gmail.com)