This is a tale of two roads in Mysore.
The Janatha Marga and Raja Marga.
The Janataha Marga is also called the poor man’s, Raja Marga. It is known as Krishnaraja sagara Road, in short, KRS Road.
Ever since the present ‘rulers’ of Mysore cast their eyes on this road, the Janatha Marga has seen only misery. Thousands of commuters used to travel in this road daily for their offices, shops, schools, Railway station and lakhs of tourists during weekends coming from all over the State and other parts of India.
Such a Road has been closed for more than a year.
Now, in these days of high costs of petrol and diesel, they are forced to take detours to the centre of the city for over an year spending extra money due to the ‘work-in –progress’ ( ! ) which is going on , with no end in sight!
A multi-disciplinary work involving Railways, Vani Vilas Water works, Chescom, PWD, MCC etc.. is going on here. The work involves doubling the rail track, re-lay the pipes for water supply , re-erection of lampposts for electricity and asphalting the roads.
Would you believe there was no Coordinating Agency which would monitor the work by various departments and specify to the public, the date of commencement of work and its completion!
In most places, one would see a board stipulating these basic details right at the site.
Haven’t we all come across work in an important arterial road connecting important junction taken up round-the clock and finished in record time in other cities and even smaller towns?
Still nobody knows whether it will be completed within next 40 days, as announced by one of the officials or take another 4 months at least according to some experts!
The Chief Minister comes here every now for his prayers and distribution of money and then and the District- in –charge Minister stays very close to this road. Nobody seems to be bothered.
That is what will happen to a Janatha Marga.. It is nobody’s baby really…
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But Raja Marga is different…
Let us have a look at the Raja Marga which is supposed to become the ‘pride’ of Administration and naturally everybody is involved.
It is supposed to cost Rs. 18 crores to upgrade a present stretch of a road of 4. 5 kms and make it mother of all Roads.
As the name suggests it will be a 'Royal Road' in the heritage city of Mysore, giving tourists ‘a feeling of going back to around one hundred years’ . The first phase of work (between Hardinge Circle and K R Circle) is likely to be completed before this year's Dasara festival.
The highlights of this project are carved stone barricade, slabs to cover storm water drain, ornamental lamps and tiles. These depict royal days of the Wadiyars of Mysore.
Only, to facilitate the’ feeling’ of going back by 100 years, around 250-300 full grown trees will be ‘felled ‘without which the Raja Marga will not be complete!
The Raja Marga will be put to use for about 4 hours in a year and it is meant for tourists who can’t even walk on the road!
The KRS road which is used by thousands of tourists to go to the famous Brindavan Gardens, can at best be described a mudtrack, basically meant for bullock carts with potholes and cannot even be termed a decent road. Most of them come back with problem of backache once they traverse up and down.
It is a shame the Government cannot concretise the road or at least ensure there are no potholes and unevenness for the entire stretch. Maintenance of this important road seems to be totally absent.
And we have money that is being poured into Raja Marga in the name of tourists to give them a feeling of Royalty hundred years ago.
To top it all , the rooftop of water tank in Yadavgiri which supplies drinking water to half of Mysore has collapsed partially .Birds have built nests inside the reservoir and there are every chance of birds and animals falling into the water. The colour of the water has turned into green and tepid smell emanates from the water.
Jawahar Lalji, the Maharajas of Mysore and Devans , Sir M. Visveswariah and Sir. Mirza Ismail - Wish you were all here. You are all missing something here!
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Temporary traffic control
Temporary traffic control (TTC) during construction by our civic agencies are pathetic & are mostly non existsnt. Even state of the art systems like metro in Bangalore are skimping on these or are providing lip service. This is mostly because we the people are not demanding enough. I dont think we should be taking such practices lying down or accept it as a sacrifice for infrastructure.
See this document how detailed TTC needs to be, and try to map how many are being followed in our constructions. You will notice we follow practices of some of the poorest & impoverished countries of the world but expect to have fountains, landscaping & metros of the first world. We call it jugaad, another word for incompetence & ineptness.
TTC
@idontspam
The TTC ineptness can be seen all around the metro construction sites. During our recent Bangalore visit we witnessed this first hand on the road adjoining lalbagh that leads to South /end circle. It is a mess there. Combined with unruly motorists and encroachments it is truly the worst possible nightmare; all comes down to a complete socio-cultural breakdown and lack of acountability. It speaks to the lack of - 1) a system(I am sure there is one on paper..procedures and rules for contruction in public places and the traffic management) 2) accountability&implementation - who are the authorities concencerned to implement & enforce the TTC & construction guidelines laid down and the traffic rules that have to be followed in a construction zone? I was totally shocked to see parked vehicles encroaching the little remaining road space and the remaining lunruly motorists trying to squeeze their vehicle into every remaining inc of space.
Verdict - total breakdown of everything from top to bottom which a common symptom of most problems you see.