Welcome to 'Crater Hyderabad' - 2

I hadn’t suspected our municipal engineers to possess a sense of humor but after I read a newsitem in the Deccan Chronicle I became convinced they had a bizarre one. It was in the paper that 23,000 potholes had formed after the rains in Hyderabad. I couldn’t help thinking what a big joke it was. Only 23,000? Every Hyderabadi knows 23000 potholes are formed on our roads every day but our engineers do not seem to notice them. In fact there are more than 23000 potholes on the stretch of road under the Oliphant Bridge in Secunderabad if only one could see them in the darkness under the bridge. Or maybe they were talking of potholes of more than a meter deep and of equal diameter. Being the Olympic season I guess the municipal engineers have seen to it that we too have Olympic sized potholes on the roads in Hyderabad.

But I wonder how our municipal engineers missed the rest of the roughly half a million potholes that anyone with normal eyesight can easily spot on our roads. Or maybe our municipal engineers are not looking down but looking up and ahead- at things like flyovers that cost hundreds of crores of rupees and take decades to build. That’s where the opportunity lies, not in potholes. They know what we ordinary people don’t know- potholes come and go but flyovers are forever.

I guess the reason why they are not yet filling the potholes up is probably they are waiting for the citizens to hand out awards like ‘Pothole of the Year’ award, ‘Most Fun Pothole’ award, ‘Fall-into-This-and You’ll-Never-Come-Out-Of-It-Alive’ Pothole’ award , ‘Most-Spontaneously-Formed-Pothole’ award, ‘Longest-Existing-Pothole’ award and such awards.

It is rather unsettling to think that our civic infrastructure like roads is in the hands of engineers who cannot repair a pothole without creating two new ones. Another thing that makes me uneasy is that the Government is giving Rs 20 crores to these same engineers for the repair of roads in Hyderabad. This must come as happy news for our municipal engineers for they’ll now have fun filling up more than just potholes.