Deadline to fill potholes: Will it do the trick?

Does anyone know how many potholes dot Bengaluru’s many roads? Some say there are around 5,000, others swear that it could be much more, in the range of 15,000. To get an exact number, one will also have to make a distinction between the potholes and the bigger, gaping ones which look more like craters and whether they could be dubbed as potholes by any stretch of imagination.

On Sunday, Deputy Chief Minister and the minister in charge of Bengaluru development DK Shivakumar sent out a strong warning to officials of the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to get their act together and fill up the potholes-or face stern action. He has also hinted at suspending officials who are laggard and unable to meet the 15-day deadline for making the roads smooth enough for a drive which does not leave you with aching limbs and severe back pain.

One can’t help wondering why the IT City’s roads are so abysmally poor in quality; one will find it hard to identify even one of them which can provide a ride without braking or swerving umpteen times to avoid a pothole staring right at you from the middle of the road. Is it because of what many dub as the contractor-politician nexus and the many ‘cuts’ one has to shell out to bag a road project, leaving precious little to ensure the quality of work undertaken? Or does it all have to be blamed on the haphazard and hasty manner in which governments and civic authorities react, after getting a backlash from the public on the despicable state of roads? Often road repair projects are handed out without ensuring that the right kind of material is used and technology adopted to set them right. The end result: the stretch opens up sooner than later and we are back to square one.

If any politician is really keen on giving a spick and span look to the city’s roads, the first thing to be done is to devote resources to conducting an elaborate survey of the bad roads and identify the reasons why they crumble under the slightest pressure on when the rains starts pounding them. To start with, 25 of the worst stretches cold be identified and teams of engineers and civic officials could be sent to work on them on a war footing. If there are road sections which are so bad that they have to be dug up and re-laid entirely, it will have to be done for hurried and haphazard filling of potholes will hardly serve any purpose or justify the funds utilised for the repairs. Bengaluru could learn from other cities across the country where roads are in better shape and do not have to be re-laid every six months.

The question also arises on whether the poor state of the rods has anything to do with the city’s topography with elevated regions interspersed with localities at a lower level where flooding easily takes place. Co-ordination between the different civic agencies is an absolute must and that hardly seems to be happening considering the amazing speed at which roads are re-laid and then again dug up within the span of a few weeks or months for another civic project or for laying pipes and ducts. There are stretches n South Bengaluru where infra work has been going on endlessly.

Are no deadlines set for completion of such work? An unwavering commitment on the part of those in power and the dedication of officials assigned the responsibility of handling civic infrastructure, can definitely work wonders. Maybe, the Deputy CM’s warning could be just the stimulus the civic workforce needed to get their act together and redeem the fair name of the Garden City.