Re: Mumbai disaster epitomizes urban India's decay
- From: "Scorpy" <scorpionic069@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 27 Jul 2005 21:59:27 -0700
***> It all comes down to the age old problem of corruption in India -
Money probably is being relegated to infrastructure during their city
hall meetings/plannings, but, when it comes to funneling cash in the
right direction, the cash goes into some corrupt politician's pockets
instead of going to where it was supposed to go, i.e. - roads, sewer
systems and such.
Regards, SCORP.
Craig West wrote:
> Mumbai disaster epitomizes urban India's decay (COMMENTARY)
> By M.R. Narayan Swamy
>
>
> The torrential downpour that devoured Mumbai, killed innocents and
> crippled life, leaving India's financial and entertainment capital
> gasping for breath, is symptomatic of the growing urban decay amid
> glitz and poverty. Mumbai's unprecedented flooding reveals all that has
> gone wrong with a country that is an IT and nuclear power but lacks a
> basic but working drainage system.
>
> Right from the days when New Delhi discarded four decades of
> semi-socialist policies to embrace a free-market economy, it became a
> fashion among the chattering classes to assert that India was poised to
> become another Singapore. For many of us who had the opportunity to
> live in that city-state, this was always amusing, to say the least.
>
> Despite its flaws (mostly political in nature), Singapore is today
> widely accepted as a world-class place to live in because it offers a
> quality of life that can be matched only in the West (besides Japan).
> It would pour and pour during the monsoon in Singapore but we would
> never find even a pool of water on any street. Singapore's wide network
> of open drains would absorb all the rain, leaving the roads always
> passable.
>
> An army of poor Indians and Bangladeshis worked from dawn until late
> evening every day to maintain Singapore's excellent drainage system
> besides its numerous tidy parks and spankingly clean roads and streets.
> It is a different matter these workers came from cities and towns that
> lacked all these facilities - and more. Surprisingly, I came across
> educated Indians who were disdainful of Singapore (because of its size
> and minuscule population), dismissing it as "just a municipality".
>
> But the Mumbai that failed its citizens is also a municipality! So why
> does one municipality succeed where another collapses? Why do people in
> Singapore walk or drive without much worry during torrential rains
> while those in Mumbai wade through waist deep water (if they can walk)
> or are forced to put up on rooftops and in buses and trains that won't
> move?
>
> Without exception, Indian cities and towns, both old and new, have over
> the decades become hellholes thanks largely to unplanned growth,
> unending migration from villages and the complete lack of discipline -
> epitomized by the Indian male who doesn't bat an eyelid before peeing
> along the pavements although he would never dare do this in Dubai,
> Singapore, London or New York. If he did that in any of these cities,
> the state would come cracking down, without mercy.
>
> No wonder, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh remarked: "I am convinced that
> Indian cities cannot continue to develop in the manner in which they
> have done in the past few decades."
>
> "The fate of cities will (more than ever) determine the well-being of
> nations" - so opined experts at a conference in Australia. The world's
> population has doubled in the last 40 years, but the urban numbers have
> jumped by five times. Mumbai, already choking, will become the second
> most populous city with 22 million souls by 2015. How will it cope?
>
> The myth in India, even among those who are educated and should know
> better, is that a Singapore is built with shopping malls, classy cinema
> halls, beauty shows, long-range missiles and satellites and, of course,
> the world of computers. But no progress will have any meaning if people
> end up living in homes that get no potable water, cry for uninterrupted
> power supply, when residential areas are considered privileged if they
> receive water supply for two hours a day, or where roads in even
> upscale neighbourhoods are not cleaned for days or when even drains are
> encroached upon without realising the long-term consequences.
>
> Mumbai may be home to the rich and beautiful, but it figures very low
> on the quality scale. A Forbes analysis ranked it 163rd among 218
> cities. Another survey, called the Hardship Index, put the city at
> number 124 out of 130. The local Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is
> among the world's richest municipal bodies but does that get reflected
> in the quality of life! Can Mumbai ever become a Singapore?
>
> (M.R. Narayan Swamy is the chief news editor of IANS, who has
> previously worked in Singapore.)
>
>
> --Indo-Asian News Service
>
> For clarifications/queries, please contact IANS NEWS DESK at
> 2616-5778/8546, 2617-3369 or mail us at
> support@xxxxxxxxx
.
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