Care. Participate. Know. Change

A 14-km stretch connecting Bidarahalli with N. Begur in H.D. Kote wore out within a few months after it had been re-laid. The residents, led by a non-governmental organisation, filed an application under the Right to Information Act and found out that the money spent was not proportionate to the work done. They filed a complaint with the Lokayukta and we ordered the road to be re-built, Mr. Hegde said. This time around, the people got involved in monitoring the work. At a workshop organised by Public Works Department, the engineers told the volunteers about road laying, ideal proportion of bitumen and gravel and the curing process. With this knowledge, small vigilance groups were formed and each group was entrusted the job of monitoring a two-km stretch. There was no way the contractor could have messed up the work. When it was pointed out that the stretch was hardly 14 km compared to 800 km here, Mr. Hegde said the difference between the two cases was not in numbers but attitudes. “Through my experiences in life, I feel that people in villages have a high civic consciousness. Most people in villages will look at a civic issue as a personal problem unlike in cities,” he said. Asked whether the PWD provided training for anybody, he said: “Not all people who build roads are engineers. I did not know anything about road building but I put some extra effort and found out,” he said.