Ride On Delhi Roads - Joy or Misery

A ride on the Delhi roads is just like one on the moon where there are craters everywhere and this too when the city is on the verge of holding an international sporting event of the Commonwealth games’ status.
The roads of “The national capital” are bumpy, full of potholes and sometimes even with open manholes which make me feel inferior about my city as even small towns have roads better than ours.
The root cause for this condition of roads, according to me, is the corruption involved in their construction i.e. the usage of inferior quality of materials by the contractors for the construction when they are paid for the best ones. This leads to poor quality of roads which do not last for too long and then the condition mentioned above prevails. Also the problem is a crop of the occasional digging up of the roads by the corporation for setting up of “new pipeline system”.
But however, I have seen “good” roads in Delhi in the areas of importance to the Delhi Government such as Rashtrapati Bhavan, India Gate, Chanakya Puri, and all the cantonment areas where the vigilance is kept tight during the construction of the roads.
The results of making these types of roads are many. Every time it rains the roads are badly water logged because of the manholes overflowing due to which there is a huge risk of water bourn diseases being caught by the area’s local residents. Also this situation brings in the risk of pedestrians falling in the uncovered manholes which are not visible because of the water logging. The roads are this bumpy that the suspensions of “the best of the best” cars fail to provide comfort. Also many a times these “killer” roads are responsible for big road accidents.
Talking about my personal experience, when ever I go to my school by a “rickshaw”, the journey makes me feel that I am a person sitting in a dirt racing car which is accustomed to the occasional “jhatkas”. This journey takes the hell out of me and in the school I am in a very less position to study. On experiencing all this, the thought off filing an “rti” form regarding the repair of these roads passes my mind but on remembering about my board class, I say to my self that “kaun time waste kare(who will waste time)”.
It seems that the contractors responsible for the construction of these roads have no sympathy for people like us and follow the ideology of the politicians that says “apna kaam banta bhaad mein jaye janta (if we get our job done, then what’s the need of thinking about others)”.
But I strongly feel that if this remains the story of the Delhi roads till the Commonwealth games, then certainly the foreigners coming to India then will take back a very bad impression about the country and this might have a negative effect on the “world city” as it might not get a further chance to hold a precious international event Of the Commonwealth games’ status.
In the end ,to sum up ,this is an effort to shake up the government to save the image of our beloved city in the eyes of the world by improving the condition of roads.

- by Rohit Gupta
New Era Public School