Thursday, April 30, 2009

The farce called development

As I write this, I can hear the various generators operating around my house here in Gurgaon. There has been no electricity here in last 12 hours and there are no chances of any reprieve either.
We talk about development in our country. Especially during the elections, most political parties want to attract attention of the middle class and upper middle class by warping about the development work which they have carried out or plan to carry out. For all other sections of society they have their tactics of regionalism, secularism and socialism. Gurgaon is soon turning into a financial hub of Northern India. A majority of its inhabitants are from the urban middle class. Gurgaon can boast of the maximum number of malls, sprawling office space and the soon to be launched Metros.
But the basic civic amenities are in the worst possible state here. There is no electricity for hours at a stretch. The roads are worse than those in villages. Every evening, the traffic jam is probably the worst of its kind and the law and order situation has plunged to a lowest possible level with murders and robberies taking place on almost daily basis.
I recently finished reading The White Tiger, in which Gurgaon was described as the closest possible replica of America in India. I hope that the author was only talking about costs of real estate and nothing else.
With elections in Gurgaon around the corner, I made an effort to look into the profiles of the incumbent MP and also the closest competitor. The present MP seems to have done nothing about the pathetic condition of the infrastructure in Gurgaon. Even though I am not too sure about the credentials of the his closest competitor, Dr. Sudha Yadav of BJP, but a quick google search tells me that the last time she was an MP, she made the best possible use of the MP fund for her constituency. These facts for sure can be misleading, but I will stick to the simple logic of not voting for the current MP because he seems to have done nothing for the 'millennium city' in last five years. Atleast it doesnt show. I guess this is what anti incumbency factor is all about.
I wonder, if cities like Gurgaon, which gets so much media attention is in such a bad state, with its local leaders doing nothing for it, what would be the conditions of the small villages and towns. Where is the Rs 2 crore per year MP fund going? Every year Rs 1150 crores is allocated to Lok Sabha MPs for development work in their constituencies...We need to know the where this money is going...RTI anyone??

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