The first photograph was taken on 5 July 2010 in Noida after a brief pre-monsoon spell. This is the second year I have seen this happen and this was to be expected except that the urban 'planners' and contractors just could not. The small 'drain' you notice was dug up after last year's monsoon led to waterlogging and traffic jams.
The other one was taken on the same day at the Lodhi Road crossing opposite the new hotel. Part of the BRT beautification carried out last year. No one bothered to think about drainage when they made the traffic island. Afterall Delhi hardly gets any rain to warrant taking preventive actions.
The other photograph I missed was of the street lights in the middle of the same road. The was a result of the fact that the roads guys decided to realign the roads in the run up to the Commonwealth Games. But just that the street lighting dept had already set up new street lighting in the central verge again as part of the energy efficiency and Commonwealth Games preparations.
All these make us think if there's something we are missing out on. I am sure we have intelligent planners as well as engineers. Were do we miss out? Does any one even care if the citizens have to suffer for something that could have been avoided?
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In free India very government department is "free" and continues to work and implement programs independently. They are free to do so because:
1. There is no engineering standards prescribed for infrastruture related work. Manuals are there, but no "handbook" for routine implementation.
2. Our cities had a natural evolution, and no designed development. Natural drain in each microwatershed was the casuality. Delhi has low annual rainfall, but has intense rain spells causing flooding of roads. In Cochin we experience this for very rain spell spreading over 100 odd days. I have experienced the sam in Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai.
3. Remeber such local flooding dissipates within 30 minutes in most cases. Naturally we can have an engineering solution if we wish to have one. A stormwater guidance document is needed for urban form where impervious land ratio is high.
4. For very development there must be a stormwater permit. The permit application should be properly scrutinized. ( This may give a new opening fo corrupt practices in a lisence raj.)
1. There is hardly any sort of inter departmental communication in our Govt sector.
2. Which leads to a lack of co ordination among departments and their jobs which they do half-finished, so you have each department digging the same road every month only to do their work and in the process ruin the previous work.