The Standpoint

MIND YOUR WORDS MA’AM!

By

Karan Deep Singh

It is time all of us go down the memory lane in order to understand the jarring images of the Capital city we all seem to be proud of today. The Chief Minister of Govt. of NCT of Delhi, Mrs. Shiela Dikshit promised a show better than Melbourne’s in 2006 when the Commonwealth Games come to the Capital in 2010. A jolting image comes to the mind where the national capital is being projected as a world-class city and a premier destination for the hosting of the 2010 Commonwealth Games while on the other hand the common man scarcely meets the day’s requirement of water and electricity.

Go back to a few months when those power cuts had you sweating night and day. Well this is what Mrs. Sheila Dikshit had to say: “This has been a very unusual and unanticipated heat wave and shortage of rain has caused this situation which has not happened in the past several years. It is a problem that has risen in the past 6-7 days and I hope that in the next two-four days we will be able to overcome it.” This was an assuring answer to your questions.

Ask about safety concerns, increasing number of rape and murder cases and the CM’s answer to you is: “Delhi is always under media scrutiny, you have tens of TV news channels and a single incident is flashed across news channels throughout the day and on front pages of newspapers.” Talk about crime and you will hear: “It is mainly due to the migrant population, that such incidents take place.”

The death of TV journalist Soumya Vishwanathan and Madam Chief Minister had to say: "One should not be ‘adventurous’, but I am really very sorry for her family. Investigations are going on. She was travelling in the early hours of the morning, so I think we need to take greater care. She was driving all by herself at 3’o clock in the morning in a city which people believe is not very safe for women after dark."

On 28^th July 2009 when those raindrops finally hit the city, some few hours of heavy rainfall had the city of 15.9 million almost UNPLUGGED. The rains crippled the city leading to flooding of numerous roads and low-lying areas because of choked drains, causing massive traffic jams and hundreds of thousands of people were hit as traffic halted on many key roads. The CM simply blamed the municipal corporation of Delhi (MCD) for the chaos.

When the same old story of July was repeated in August in addition to the winds uprooting around 130 trees in the city, the same night our Chief Minister went on record and said: “Such heavy rainfall was unexpected and traffic jams are a result of that. Traffic Jams kaun rok sakta hai aisi baarish mein; app rok kar dikhaiye agar rok sakte hain toh!”

Alas, these images of the Capital developing on one hand and the reality being a lot more stark and different from what is being communicated by the Govt. is what forms the question today; the metro ride sure makes us all breathe easy everyday and we appreciate it but why do they keep telling us it is “unusual”, “unanticipated”, “unexpected” and “we were not prepared” when that is exactly why we elected this Government for in it’s third term.

While these questions seem to hover over the people of the city, the Commonwealth Games 2010 as the backdrop at the newly constructed bus-stops seems to be doing extremely well in reminding an office-goer that it will soon be over; that a miracle called CWG 2010 will erase all traffic snarls, power cuts, water shortage, every problem once and for all!