PAUCITY, MISUSE AND RELIGION - NO RESPITE FOR THE COMMAN MAN
I, a management trainee of Ernst&Young company, have lost my job today because i wasn’t able to finish my ‘project report’ and ‘market analysis’ within the stipulated date. On top of it, i had been reaching late to office on a regular basis for the past two months. Out of twenty trainees, five of the most efficient ones were to be recruited by the company and i, inspite of being amongst the best of the lot, lost this golden opportunity which could have put an end to the drudgeries of my family permanently and transformed my life forever. But it’s not my ‘inefficiency’ which is to be blamed for my losing out on my dream job, as the real culprit behind all this is the M.C.D. and the Delhi Electricity Board.
I stay in C.R.Park in Delhi. In C.R.Park , and in most other parts of Delhi as well, there is serious power crisis and chronic water shortage. Apart from brief power cuts at regular intervals during day time, the electricity also goes off every night at 11 o’clock sharp. I haven’t been able to sleep well since the past three months as the power cut ends sometimes at 4 o’clock, sometimes 5, and sometimes even 6 o’clock in the morning. Sometimes I really wonder that since there is no fixed time of the start or end of a power cut, is it by any chance, the Electricity Board workers way to settle personal scores with the residents of a particular locality or does it, to a large extent, depend on the mood and good humor of the Delhi Electricity Board. After all, we’ve all been witnesses to the partiality on the part of the electricity board, which always makes sure to have negligible power cuts in V.I.P. areas or localities where an M.P. or a M.L.A.’s house is situated. The houses of these influential people might be having the most power consuming appliances and amenities but they are never subjected to even minor power cuts because of their high position. But as far as all the helpless unfortunate lesser mortals like us are concerned, we are destined to have unending sweaty sleepless nights with the mosquitoes continuously buzzing near our ears, waiting for the slightest of opportunity to feast on the little bit of blood that is left in our feeble veins after the politicians, police and inflation have already quenched their greedy thirst. It becomes so unbearably stuffy at times, that in the middle of the night, I go out on the street to have a bit of fresh air and there I find many a similar sufferers of the ‘ages yoke’, SILENTLY strolling.
But this is not the end to comman man’s suffering. The Corporation lets out water every morning at six, for just an hour or so. During this short span, hundreds and thousands of Delhi-ites pull water from the main pipe-line with electric pumps so as to have a greater share of the supposed-to-be equally distributed ‘controlled’ water. Unfortunately, my family’s economic condition does not permit us to buy those costly pumps and so every morning, the first thing I have to do after getting up in an utterly irritated state of mind due to lack of sleep or no sleep, is to make many trips to the far end of the parallel lane beside my house, to fill buckets full of water from the hand-pump situated there. Unlike some more affluent homes, we cannot even order the Delhi Jal Board water tankers as they are as costly as Rs.500 per tank. After not being able to sleep properly for so many days, and spending most of the morning in filling every utensil at home with clean ‘hand-pumped’ water, which man with ordinary faculties can reach office on time and then have the mental state as well to excel in his work.
The irony is that in our country, half the citizens are not able to get water from the corporation pipe-lines because of scarcity or in the absence of water pumps but still they have to pay exorbitant water tax bills just because the pipe-line is running through their house. Electricity is almost ‘extinct’, but still the electricity board tortures the citizens by sending faulty over-stated bills just to be able to ask for bribes in the process of rectifying the bill. During elections, several political parties shamelessly talk of bringing electricity to the villages to lure the uneducated villagers, although three hours of uninterrupted power supply in the cities is an unachievable target, rather a far-fetched dream.
We are a developing economy, and I would have believed all these problems to be ‘infrastructural hiccups’ as a result of ‘unplanned urbanization’ only if I had not been a witness to the sight I saw today. It was “Janmaashtami”, and after hearing the heart breaking news of my rejection at office when I went out, i was shocked to see a Delhi groaning under severe power shortage suddenly adorned with millions of bulbs across any and every street. Huge gates glittering with colourful lights to greet people on the occasion and hundreds of loud-speakers chanting bhajans. A city totally transformed. My anger knew no bounds. The shortage of this very “electricity” which was being wasted recklessly on a festival, if not misused and wasted, could have given me the sleep, and also my job. I might have become a big businessman or an industrialist eventually, and contributed to the country’s GDP. But all my dreams and aspirations were nipped in the bud because of the incapability of the ‘Capital city’ of the ‘largest democracy in the world’ to provide it’s residents with two basic necessities for survival - WATER and ELECTRICITY.
Delhi is aspiring to become New York by 2011 for the C’wealth games, but what’s the use of flyovers, sky-scrappers and malls in a city which is tormenting it’s residents with sleepless nights and killing them with thirst in the absence of clean drinking water. But what can one really expect from a country where millions of poor die unattended and unsheltered but millions are spent recklessly on stone temples and gold idols, where the comman man does not have clean water to drink but Gods relish on single- toned packet milk, where citizens suffer from power shortage but lords birthday is celebrated with zillions of bulbs.
Note : I, Shubhro Sen, am neither a management trainee nor have I missed out on any dream job. But through this imaginary personalized account of suffering, due to the sheer mismanagement on the part of the Municipal Corporation, of not only Delhi, but all cities and towns of India, i’ve attempted to aptly portray the basic and fundamental problems of survival which the voiceless faceless comman man of our country is facing, but is still SILENT.
BY : SHUBHRO SEN
I stay in C.R.Park in Delhi. In C.R.Park , and in most other parts of Delhi as well, there is serious power crisis and chronic water shortage. Apart from brief power cuts at regular intervals during day time, the electricity also goes off every night at 11 o’clock sharp. I haven’t been able to sleep well since the past three months as the power cut ends sometimes at 4 o’clock, sometimes 5, and sometimes even 6 o’clock in the morning. Sometimes I really wonder that since there is no fixed time of the start or end of a power cut, is it by any chance, the Electricity Board workers way to settle personal scores with the residents of a particular locality or does it, to a large extent, depend on the mood and good humor of the Delhi Electricity Board. After all, we’ve all been witnesses to the partiality on the part of the electricity board, which always makes sure to have negligible power cuts in V.I.P. areas or localities where an M.P. or a M.L.A.’s house is situated. The houses of these influential people might be having the most power consuming appliances and amenities but they are never subjected to even minor power cuts because of their high position. But as far as all the helpless unfortunate lesser mortals like us are concerned, we are destined to have unending sweaty sleepless nights with the mosquitoes continuously buzzing near our ears, waiting for the slightest of opportunity to feast on the little bit of blood that is left in our feeble veins after the politicians, police and inflation have already quenched their greedy thirst. It becomes so unbearably stuffy at times, that in the middle of the night, I go out on the street to have a bit of fresh air and there I find many a similar sufferers of the ‘ages yoke’, SILENTLY strolling.
But this is not the end to comman man’s suffering. The Corporation lets out water every morning at six, for just an hour or so. During this short span, hundreds and thousands of Delhi-ites pull water from the main pipe-line with electric pumps so as to have a greater share of the supposed-to-be equally distributed ‘controlled’ water. Unfortunately, my family’s economic condition does not permit us to buy those costly pumps and so every morning, the first thing I have to do after getting up in an utterly irritated state of mind due to lack of sleep or no sleep, is to make many trips to the far end of the parallel lane beside my house, to fill buckets full of water from the hand-pump situated there. Unlike some more affluent homes, we cannot even order the Delhi Jal Board water tankers as they are as costly as Rs.500 per tank. After not being able to sleep properly for so many days, and spending most of the morning in filling every utensil at home with clean ‘hand-pumped’ water, which man with ordinary faculties can reach office on time and then have the mental state as well to excel in his work.
The irony is that in our country, half the citizens are not able to get water from the corporation pipe-lines because of scarcity or in the absence of water pumps but still they have to pay exorbitant water tax bills just because the pipe-line is running through their house. Electricity is almost ‘extinct’, but still the electricity board tortures the citizens by sending faulty over-stated bills just to be able to ask for bribes in the process of rectifying the bill. During elections, several political parties shamelessly talk of bringing electricity to the villages to lure the uneducated villagers, although three hours of uninterrupted power supply in the cities is an unachievable target, rather a far-fetched dream.
We are a developing economy, and I would have believed all these problems to be ‘infrastructural hiccups’ as a result of ‘unplanned urbanization’ only if I had not been a witness to the sight I saw today. It was “Janmaashtami”, and after hearing the heart breaking news of my rejection at office when I went out, i was shocked to see a Delhi groaning under severe power shortage suddenly adorned with millions of bulbs across any and every street. Huge gates glittering with colourful lights to greet people on the occasion and hundreds of loud-speakers chanting bhajans. A city totally transformed. My anger knew no bounds. The shortage of this very “electricity” which was being wasted recklessly on a festival, if not misused and wasted, could have given me the sleep, and also my job. I might have become a big businessman or an industrialist eventually, and contributed to the country’s GDP. But all my dreams and aspirations were nipped in the bud because of the incapability of the ‘Capital city’ of the ‘largest democracy in the world’ to provide it’s residents with two basic necessities for survival - WATER and ELECTRICITY.
Delhi is aspiring to become New York by 2011 for the C’wealth games, but what’s the use of flyovers, sky-scrappers and malls in a city which is tormenting it’s residents with sleepless nights and killing them with thirst in the absence of clean drinking water. But what can one really expect from a country where millions of poor die unattended and unsheltered but millions are spent recklessly on stone temples and gold idols, where the comman man does not have clean water to drink but Gods relish on single- toned packet milk, where citizens suffer from power shortage but lords birthday is celebrated with zillions of bulbs.
Note : I, Shubhro Sen, am neither a management trainee nor have I missed out on any dream job. But through this imaginary personalized account of suffering, due to the sheer mismanagement on the part of the Municipal Corporation, of not only Delhi, but all cities and towns of India, i’ve attempted to aptly portray the basic and fundamental problems of survival which the voiceless faceless comman man of our country is facing, but is still SILENT.
BY : SHUBHRO SEN
posted by Shubhro at 12:46 PM
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