Potholes in India or India in Potholes

Now that monsoon has finally arrived in the country’s financial capital, the season drags with it some serious concerns, ones of which are potholes. Indians have been plagued with a list of issues in everyday life and the prominent ones being incompetent infrastructure. Even after having written time and again about these issues by newspapers but regrettably these falls on deaf ears of the apathetic public service system thereby attracts minimal attention.

Potholes have been a major concern in India, particularly in Mumbai for quite a long time. The degraded road structure has created lot of inconvenient for commuters and at times is responsible for accidents as well. The condition becomes worse during monsoon as water gets clogged in these craters formed on roads making it more prominent and noticeable.
Now the questions why do you think potholes form? The first and foremost reasons would be negligence in proper maintenance of roads and secondly due to the use of inferior quality materials for repairing the damaged roads. Such is the quality of these materials that it gets swayed off just after the first shower exposing the deep hollows on the roads.

Despite of having world’s second largest road network and the thriving auto industry that adds more than 7 million new vehicles to the road every year, India has the poorest quality of bituminous roads. These roads unlike the concrete ones have short life and require servicing in every 8-10 months. We, the common man, have been shedding off fortunes in the form of taxes to our government every year. I wonder where on the earth this money goes? If it were invested somewhere then being a responsible citizen of the country, we have the right to know, which mysterious project is eating up our money.

 
If you all remember, we were taught in school that the one must pay tax to the government as the money given will be used for our and our country’s benefit. So far our benefit has never been considered, the country’s benefit is nowhere seen, but it seems our ministers have benefited and that too a lot by charging us with hefty taxes. They are becoming richer day by day. Today there is no profession in India that could make you rich so soon like politics.

 
With the ever rising population, our country is no new to traffic jams. During the peak hours the roads are jammed to an extent that it feels it will take ages to reach the destination which would otherwise have been made in just 20-30 minutes. The reasons for these jams are countless, including the deliberate ignorance for road rules, the insufficient number of lanes, overworked traffic police and the eternal length of potholes on the existent Indian roads.

 
Expecting these issues to vanish overnight is quite impracticable. But these issues are causing much more than momentary annoyances. Yes these potholed roads are one of the reasons that lead to economic losses. In addition to delays in transportation, potholes consume more fuel and result into an amplified Vehicle Operating Cost (VOC). Knowing all this our government simply keeps on making promises of solving the problem at the earliest. We are left with no options but to “wait and watch”, like we have done all these years. Isn’t it???