Great Wall of China in Hyderabad

Every couple of months or so someone in the municipality gets another idea to make life more difficult for motorists in Hyderabad, as if the potholes aren’t doing an adequate job of it. He thinks up strange ideas to put more obstacles in our paths or rather, our roads. I’ve occasion to observe this phenomenon at length. My route to and from office involves passing through the Liberty circle where I guess, the world’s largest experiment involving road dividers is taking place for some years now. A couple of years ago, the municipal authorities put those metal road dividers with wheels near the Liberty circle to prevent people from crossing the road randomly, which Hyderabadis think is their birth right. After sometime the metal road dividers gave way to one actually built in the middle of the road in the form of a long train with bogies.

This train like road divider, about a foot high and painted black and white, proved inadequate as a road divider because people broke them at places to cross the road on their bikes. These were demolished after a short life giving way to portable, inverted ‘Y’ shaped cement blocks joined together as road dividers. These were about three feet high and were performing well dividing not just the road but also the locality as well. These too were inadequate since they stopped movement of rainwater as well so they were moved hither and tither whenever it rained. These too are on their way to oblivion for in their place is coming up something that is beginning to resemble one of the Seven Wonders of the World, in other words, the Great Wall of China.

If one happens to drive on the road leading from Liberty circle towards Himayatnagar one sees that nearly three fourths of the road in the middle is occupied by granite blocks, loose rocks, sand and lots of cement. It heralds the construction of yet another of those invincible, impregnable road dividers of the sort found in Begumpet. It is really a massive structure several feet in width and of equal height. One needs the sort of long poles pole vaulters use to cross the road now. I am not really surprised that it is being built since it is inevitable but what surprises is the timing. Why build it now when the rains have already begun? I wonder why they don’t pay the same attention to fixing the potholes than building road dividers. Strange are the ways of the municipal engineers.