Deepak Laad
What’s in a name? The Bard had wondered, but actually there is lot hidden in names. ‘Imagine Panaji smart city development Ltd.’ sounds innocuous to ears, but there is lot of cunning hidden behind that nomenclature. It keeps us occupied in imagining smart things for the capital city with little assurance of turning them into reality. The initiative has become an object of ridicule, because of the sloppy and tardy manner it is being implemented. The whole process is going through a now familiar patterned motions without causing much change on the ground of the dying city that looks more like a squalor ridden medieval town. Keeping boxes at street corners asking the residents to drop suggestions or inviting them to meetings to spell those out in person, has been going on ritualistically since the time the body was formed. Over the period, there are few additions to the coterie of now familiar speakers and the same issues are chewed over and over again in the meetings.
Their names and contributions at the meetings are promptly splashed in next day’s editions. Fact is, you can get published a day in advance what would be played out in the next day’s meeting, if you have attended any one such meeting in the past. You need smart leaders with vision, acumen of a planner heading these bodies. You need the originals with an ability to spot the problems and come up with sustainable solutions with minimum brainstorming dramas and without running to public for advice every now and then like a second hander.
Erratic traffic and parking violations are major problems facing the would be smart city. The parking slots in the heart of the city are taken for longer durations by staff and patrons of the flotilla of Casinos in river Mandovi. The number of Casino goers is ever rising and the number of Casino vessels too has gone up in recent years. Vehicles dropping the casino guests at the entry points near the jetty roadside hamper the peak hour traffic, as people start making way homeward, causing traffic snarls and chaos at the entrances of the bridges and Divja Circle. Vehicles are also seen parked regularly on the footpath near the casino entry points and in ‘no parking areas’ of the city, too. It is a mystery why no one uploads their pictures on the police traffic App. Looks like the App has been just reduced to a lottery periodically selecting winners of the contest, akin to those games of chance played in Casinos, sans an initial bet placed. Otherwise, the offenders wouldn’t have dared to repeat the offences if only the App had shown teeth as a potent deterrent. Without shifting the Casinos elsewhere there cannot be realistic solution to parking problems and traffic congestions is a gospel truth.
The VIP culture too adds to the traffic woes on week days. When people park their cars at the roadside in front of Court building near old secretariat they do cause hindrance and deservedly get challaned, but bigger cars of the judges parked in the same area are spared. A notice announcing
‘Parking for Judges’ absolves them from infractions and makes what is ‘wrong parking’ for lesser mortal right in their case. Judges should ponder over the paradox that every day they enter the court breaking traffic rules and then sit adjudicating on larger issues inside. The same way vehicles flaunting Government dept. number plates and police vans seem outside the purview of parking rules without any need to adhere to them.
Cleanliness may or may not take one to Godliness or next to it, but it helps one look smarter for sure and that is sorely missing in the city. Seldom have we witnessed city streets being swept. The mounds of broken tiles and excavated soil deposits lying on road side and heaps of garbage in street corners remain untouched for days and months on end. Remember the eager lot that had gone to test check the functioning of weed cutter in St. Inez creek facing risk of getting drowned? Well, after all that initial hyper enthusiastic drama the creek today looks dirty as ever.
One need not be a connoisseur of art to tell an ugly form from an aesthetic one. The statues installed in the city squares and circles at exorbitant cost to beautify and smarten up the city’s look are eyesore. The one in front of Café Bhosle is the most hideous among them. Also in deference to the memory of compassionate and benevolent late Dona Paula they should leave her area in as original and natural form, saving it from too much of its concretization.
These are obvious and conspicuous issues, coming in the way of the city becoming smart, need to be addressed to. Bereft of solutions coming locally here is what’s going to happen. The body might simply go to foreign shores to find them there just the way our smart PWD Minister found a smart solution to improve our water plants thousands of miles away in Portugal. That will also exhaust the allocated budget and then one fine morning they will go ahead and declare the hitherto ugly city’s metamorphosis in a smart one. A feather in BJP and Modi’s cap will raise my status too as Smart City-dweller.
