By Murali Krishnan, IANS,
Waterlogged roads, uprooted trees, non-functional traffic signals, vehicle breakdowns, serpentine queues of vehicles and now a roofless airport! These happen with unfailing regularity – whenever a heavy downpour or thunderstorm hits India’s capital as it has thrice in the past month – and every time officialdom refuses to make amends.
Almost on cue, the blame game begins for the chaos that reigns on Delhi’s roads for those nightmarish hours. The Delhi government blames the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) which is responsible for the civic maintenance of most of Delhi, which in turn blames everyone else, including the unannounced fury of nature, but itself. The Public Works Department (PWD) and Delhi Police too are too apportioned blame for their failure to manage arterial roads and traffic respectively.
But just where does the buck stop? Of the over 700 traffic signals, almost 40 percent hardly ever function, says a survey. Forget the anarchy when it rains as Delhi’s drivers, not particularly known for their driving etiquette, let their horns roar and break every traffic rule in the book.
The MCD claims it supervises the city’s 1,550 storm water drains and spends over Rs.200 million (Rs20 crores) annually in desilting and cleaning drains. This time around, it also bought two super sucker machines for Rs.100 million (Rs 10 crores). Clearly, the drainage system has not worked as the entire city was drowned in rainwater on all three occasions.
The quickfire winds and rain on Friday evening were, however, a great leveller. While it was virtually apocalyptic for Delhi’s commoners, the political class too got a feel of what it means to be stranded for hours on end.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kalraj Mishra, stuck in his Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) probably on his way to the airport, and Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, who was forced to take the clean and efficient Delhi Metro after landing at the airport, got to know first hand what the ordianry citizen went through in the meandering tail back at Lajpat Nagar.
Emergency services and the disaster management cell of Delhi Police were pressed into action but the roads were still blocked and till late into the night even the diplomatic thoroughfare of Shantipath and approach roads to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Race Course Road were clogged with traffic for hours.
That the spanking new Rs.5 billion domestic Terminal 1D at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) could not even withstand one spell of moderately heavy rain, forcing the authorities to shut it down for nearly an hour, speaks volumes.
The X-ray screening had to stop, airlines staff were forced to shut their computers as the roof began leaking and thousands of passengers could not be checked in. Even the last time around water had entered the terminal, giving passengers a harrowing time.
And guess what. In another four months, Delhiites are up for another upheaval. As certain as the turn of season every year is the thick fog that descends over large parts of northern India, come winter. And with equal regularity every year, airports, especially Delhi’s busy IGIA, is bound to turn into a battle zone with harried passengers and powerless airlines officials curse each other and the weather.
For years now, the civil aviation authorities have promised to crack the whip and direct private airlines operators to train their pilots to operate the ILS Cat-III systems that help them fly planes in poor visibility and foggy conditions. But that has not happened.
Redux 2009. Passengers will go through the same drill of screaming, shouting and tearing their hair as they wait for inordinately long hours in Delhi for their flights.
And to think that the city’s administrators are going to make Delhi a world class city that is going to host the Commonwealth Games in 2010, stage some games of the Cricket World Cup in 2011 and make a bid for the 2014 Asian Games. One shudders at the thought!
(23-08-2009- Murali Krishnan can be reached at [email protected])