Municipal

The Uncommonness of 2010 Commonwealth Games

With less than two months left for the nineteenth Commonwealth Games to be held in the Indian capital city of Delhi, the games are now the most talked about topic in India. Even politicians are not missing out on scoring some points and getting some publicity through it. And the poor organizing committee is bearing the brunt of all of it. Did I call the organizing committee poor!!!!!!! Yes, it’s a 28,054 crore poor committee. These are the most expensive commonwealth games ever beating the previous Melbourne edition of the games by US $ 0.5 billion.
Looking at the facilities offered by Delhi we have to look at two distinct things here: one is infrastructure facility and the other is sporting facilities. The injury of diver Priyanka Banarjee at the newly inaugurated Shayama Prasad Mukherjee swimming complex which should have come in as a red flag to the organizing team and being downplayed by them calling it a hype created by the media. We have seen stadium roof come off, half an hour of rain creating seepages and continuous traffic jams due to rains. The foreign media has already issued guidelines to their citizens telling them to expect half dug up city. “The Indian mess has destroyed any proposed Olympic bid before one has even been launched,” said London based Daily Telegraph, in an article last week. The Delhi government has itself raised concerns over the hygiene standard for eateries. The slow bookings for Hotels and Guest houses do not come as a surprise. In fact there are more booking for people going out of Delhi during the games than in the city. Since the Delhi government has directed schools, colleges and government offices to shut down during the games to free up resources it offers a perfect vacation time for Delhiites.
Read more…

Sentencing public officials for preventing flow of pollutants into a river

Indian rivers are filthy, with frequent reports of how the level of contaminants in the rivers of the country (including the holy rivers) is much (many times) over the levels that are fit for humans to even bathe in, forget drinking. As an example, the Yamuna is now considered to be of the same level as a drain in Delhi; at its entry into Delhi, it is bad for human consumption, and by the time it leaves the capital, it is so saturated with filth and pollution that it is considered dangerous to humans. In the last 1-2 years, there have numerous articles about how all the major rivers are India are facing the same level of pollution. In Punjab, the Sutlej had a huge number of fish suddenly dying because of the uncontrolled release of effluents.
Is the situation treatable ? Apparently not if one goes by the efforts undertaken by the Governments (both central and state). What has happened that huge amounts have been spent in the name of of Ganga and Yamuna Pollution control, and yet the rivers have only got more polluted. Refer this article (link) and you can see how the levels of pollution in rivers has increased drastically in the last decade.

In just over a decade, India’s major rivers have been desecrated. Urban filth and industrial pollution are scientific causes, but what drives them is personal greed and administrative indifference. Environmentalists believe that apart from industrial pollution and sewage, the increase in number of slaughterhouse, dhobi ghats, crematoria and slums are the major sources of pollution in these rivers. Every year, religious idols are immersed in rivers which lose a little more of their life as they are choked yet again.
Read more…

Delhi collapses after 4 hours of rain

Be careful what you wish for ! Delhi and North India were bereft of rain during the first month of the rainy season. A bit about why Delhi is special. This is a city that is supposed to become a world class city, a city that will host the Commonwealth Games. It is the city that is the capital of a hot emerging economy, the city where people from over the world get their first glimpse of Delhi.
On 27/7/2009, the first major rainfall (major means this was 4 hours of rainfall, not 12 hours or something like that) brought this city to its knees. The news channels are full of roads being flooded, all the major intersections suffering heavy jams (including many areas of the New Delhi area that normally do not suffer traffic jams). Gridlock was the word, with many cases where people did not move beyond 100 meters in 2 hours.
What are the major causes of such a situation:
Read more…