Random Thoughts

Potholes in the orphanage

By Brij ⋅ December 22, 2005 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

So far I have been going through the pain of either walking or driving over infamous potholes of Bangalore. Yesterday I witnessed first hand how pothole gets created and the very t=0 of pothole creation.

Most of these are the signs of unprecendented pace of economic development taking place in Bangalore. So dusty work-in-progress is very much a yin of the rapid economic development yang.

Workers came in the morning, blocked the road and quickly got down to digging the road. There is a wicked efficiency when it comes to digging the road (which is usually missing when the time comes to fill it). In few hours they managed to do something which will put any civil engineer into depression. At the end of the work they quickly patched up, leaving huge chunk of dirt lying on the surface.

And they fled ! No audit, no review, nobody bothering to make anybody accountable for this shoddy work.

Potholes in Bangalore are like orphans. Infact they are orphans, result of a system which has no accountability and result of a civic society which has no stake in it’s public spaces. I am not aware of any study done to calculate the overall economic impact of potholes but if one combines the collective damage society pays towards -

bad traffic
poor productivity
accident hazards
wear and tear of automobiles
poor image of the city
health hazards due to excessive dust

One can very well fix this problem. Again the problem is who will fix it?

Found two interesting websites in this context :

- Bangalore Potholes
- Bangalore Pothole