In the Name of Development

Lots of things are being done, lots of changes made, in the name of development. But the true question when put  forward, produces some vague responses, very few laudable, but most of them hilarious. No one seems to have understood, or have a desire to understand the true meaning of development. My attempt of an answer to this might be unsatisfactory to a few, but its my view point and you can comment upon it.

An example to start. Our area is being converted in to municipal corporation from a village panchayat, and we have a view that it will affect us adversly.

Hence there is a huge resistance from our side to this move. But its difficult for some people, and one particular person from a nearby city asked me and my friend, who stay in the same area as mine, why should we resist since the formation of municipal corporation brings about development? My friend ask him the million rupee question, “What is development?” The prompt reply was that there was construction of lots of huge buildings, which wsa good for the city. When asked as to how many of this towers had proper access road or electricity for 24 hours or continuous water supply, there was a mumbled attempt to some answer, but in vain. Then the next question was about the location of a government run hospital providing to the needs of poor, on which the reply was prompt and pointing out one particular hospital. We reminded him about the condition of the hospital and the lack of experienced doctors. We even pointed out how it was used only for carrying out autopsies. On being asked about a good educational institution, he pointed out many of them located in the gram panchayat area, but none so well known from the city area. So is this development? What has stopped any city from building proper health care centers or educational institutions, when it can keep on building huge commercial buildings?

I work in the city of Mumbai. I stay in a village which is around 60 km from my workplace. The british connected my town with the main city way back in 1925, since they had some foresight towards future population explosion around the financial hub. But the condition of this mass transport system has not improved much since then. The crowd, keeps on growing, no matter how many lines are added to the route or no matter how many coaches are attached to the trains. And this transport system has reached its saturation point with further expansion impossible. The travel time has increased due to congestion at nodal station.

Half of my life is wasted in travel to my workplace. Surely there is a roadway as an alternate, but if all the people start using their personal vehicles on this roads, the condition on roads would be much worse than now.There is no proper mass transport system to connect two cities. So whatever “development” was done since independence, seems to have dragged up back in time.

Food, clothing and shelter are the three basic needs of mankind, and any kind of progress or development as we call it, needs to keep in mind this three basic factors for survival of our species. But building high rises seems to be the priority of our authorities, thus neglecting the food department of our basic needs. What about the agrigultural land that is turning barren because farmers are preferring migration to cities for jobs, due to lack of any proper support mechanism to the farmers from the government in case of any natural calamity. What about the water supply? Major city like Mumbai faces acute water shortage in summers, even after water cuts throughout the year. How can any city, or a country be developed if its not self sufficient in food? Agriculturally advanced countries like the USA, Autralia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina, which are self sufficient in food, are much ahead of us with regards to development.

What about the secondary needs of mankind like transport, power etc. Lets say electric power. We all know that India has a huge shortfall in supply of the power to its consumers. Except for major cities, rest of the India faces scheduled power cuts, which are increasing in frequency. So isn’t the city thriving at the expense of small towns and villages. Why this unequal treatment when both pay equal taxes? And how much of this tax has been used for true development

by government? Private firms, which can charge higher amount for power supply, build up huge power plants on large scale, but how much megawatts of power has the government added in previous 10 years? Not much I guess, else the demand supply gap wouldn’t have increased explosively.

We build buildings and then we remember that we had to have wider roads for easy traffic movement. So we demolish those buildings or houses which are not strong enough to resistance. After the road is completed our gas company remembers that it has forgotten to lay down pipes for supplying gas to the buildings. Dig dig dig. Then our telephone company again goes dig dig dig to lay down communication lines. Oh!! The municipal corporation forgot to laydown proper sewers aroud the city. So dig dig dig. The road endup being digged up more often than usable. A very recent case makes my point where the construction of a skywalk begun with digging of road and in the process congesting traffic, breaking up communication lines and water supply pipes. Then the dug up holes stay for few months and were ultimately filled back. It seems that the project scrapped. Only sign of that project is the damaged road which, I doubt, will be repaired soon. The civic authorities seem to not know that the planning is amongst the first step for proper development.

No one is against development. But the consequence of development were better life for mankind, and this doesn’t seem to happen anymore.