Before I venture out I would like to share with all one of my old classic favorite songs –
It’s a beautiful soft song and there are many such songs that were composed in the 1960’s. This specific song is from the movie ‘Woh Kaun Thi’ . The original song was sung by Indian Nigtingale Mrs. Lata Mangeshkar. The newer sound that you hear though is of Shreya Ghosal.
At this time the election scenario has been where all promises have been broken. While in the last blog post I had promised I will share some of the issues lot of events have taken in-between and there also had been lot of memories of broken promises by the ruling party which has lead not just me but probably lot of Puneties unhappy and disappointed. I will try and share some of them.
2014 Water pipeline promises
Pune has been facing water shortages since the last decade or so. In fact the situation has turned from bad to worse. The previous government promises they will make lot of pipelines and were voted to power. There was water pipeline scam and the Government changed in 2014. From 2014 to 2019 the water crisis has worsened. In my own home, we get water for only 2-3 hours daily. We have not been able to entertain any families for more than a day because of water issues. The only fortunate part is that I have to walk at the most 20 meters to take water while in some places people have to go miles or do dangerous things such as one I’m sharing below.
As can be seen they are going 60 feet down a well without any support structure or even a rope which means they can fall, injure or even die at any moment, a false step. And this they do everyday in order to get water for their families. This place is around 100 – 120 kms. from Pune. More than 1/3rd of the state has been declared as drought hit
Now we have the present ruling Government in Central, State as well as Municipalities but still the water projects are at the same place since 2014. In fact last year they raised 200 crore rupees saying we are short of funds for the project. Luckily I didn’t participate and I will share why I say luckily. Instead of INR 200 crore, people gave between INR 400-500 crores and this was raised in 2-3 days when the municipal bonds were going to be there for 2 weeks. It was made to imply that the investments would be under sovereign guarantee of Government of India . After the money was collected, it was told that neither the Center nor the State takes any responsibility for the money that was collected. The last I heard on the issue is that apparently the money has been kept in a Fixed Deposit Account (no reason given) .
Apart from the monetary issue, why did it take them 4 years to know that Pune has a water problem when that was their political plank which they had sold to Puneties. Of the several projects that are supposed to happen, the Bhama Akshad Dam project has been hanging fire since 2010. In fact it has its own page on wikipedia so it’s one of the notable water projects. The less I say of the other projects, the better.
Pune Municipal Transport or PMT
One of the other electoral promises that the current Government had made was that there will be a huge improvement in lot number of areas of PMT’s functioning. Accountability, number of buses, number of routes, less breakdowns and less corruption. Neither of these promises have been implemented. PMPML which also a webpage on wikipedia clearly shows that number of breakdowns, while unoffically the number is probably one and half times than what has been reported. As can be seen the last stats. are of 2016-2017, there are no stats. either of 2017-18 or 2018-19. This shows at the very least negligence and lack of transparency on the present Government. This is the same Government which has put spent close to 5,200 crores on advertisements (probably even more) as shared by Rajvardhan Rathore in a Lok Sabha reply in July 2018. And the amount that was spent within July 2018 – May 2019 would probably be about around 2000 crores or something as they spent a lot in ads this year, so the final tax payer and black money must be around 7,200 crores. It is possible that some estimates could be made by PRS and Election Commission, although the less I say about the EC, the better.
Pune Metro Project
This is and was one of the projects I am and was looking forwards to. The Pune Metro was going to make it easier just like Delhi Metro makes it easier to travel from point A to point B without waiting for a bus which when it will come is not known. To keep updated on the project I followed the Pune Metro project twitter handle. The twitter handle is and was useful as it used to keep me updated about how the Pune project is doing. I am one of those who used to check the twitter page daily just to know if they had posted something new just because I have fascination about transit systems, rails, planes, buses you name it. From 18th March 2019, the twitter handle stopped sharing any new news. The first week or two went by and I thought it is possible that due to Election Comission rules they might not be sharing. But even after Pune voted i.e 26th March, 2019 there were still no updates. Somehow I felt something is fishy and on a hunch I tried to see if the Nagpur Metro Rail handle was also showing similar.
To my surprise, the Nagpur Metro Rail were sharing, giving updates even though there is and was a huge section of Nagpur who didn’t feel the need of a metro. Pune does. So I dug a little deeper and found out that HCC has been terminated out of Pune Metro . Just to share a bit of history, this route is the most crucial part of the project as it is the first phase. Just to put a bit of context here HCC used to be a Navratna status public-private company which used to be at the bourses around INR 40-44/- which has now come to INR 13/- and will probably slide to something like INR 10/- . While I do not really want to get into how they have destructed public limited companies and it would probably need a blog post or two to share all the public limited companies they have systematically destroyed let’s leave that for another day.
As far as Pune Metro is concerned, I don’t see anything now till whatever the New Government comes into power anything will happen. This may happen in a month or two from today. Let’s say whatever Government does comes to power, there is also no guarantee that the team that is/was driving the Pune Metro will be managing then. If there is a new team it will again take its own sweet time. Even if the old team is given responsibility it will take close to 6 months to a year for replacements to come by as they would have to re-issue a global tender all over again giving an updated picture of the work done, the work yet to be completed and so on and so forth. We know the delay is going to be so severe that an ardent Pune metro video blogger whom I know, Yogi Logic shared just how things are without saying much as there is nothing left to say 😦
While I could go on sharing lot more deficiencies on the local, Municipal and State level, forget the center but that will have to be for another day.
Update 06/05/2019 – Few friends asked me to aslso share the work that Paani foundation has been doing and the transparent way they have been doing it.
Paani Foundation
Paani Foundation is headed by Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao. You can see the Paani Foundation’s website as well as the places where they are working. Now my question is, if a non-profit can show where they are doing things, show videos and stuff, also be available to answer queries and one can go and investigate then why not the Government. One thing I need to point out is that they are doing these things very cheaply. While Aamir and his team provide the expertise, the villagers spend their own money, get the materials, do shramdhan i.e, donate an hour or two from your life to make the watershed dam. While they wanted to do this since 2014 but due to bureacratic hurdles and what not, they could only start in 2017. There was an interview in which he shared the above. He also shared he learnt it in WOTR, a pune-based organization.
There is another thing as well. I think I had shared adventures travelingr with a friend when he wanted to look up houses, while he is still on the hunt, lot of projects that we together have now got some sort of RWH (Rain Water Harvesting projects) but that also seems interesting although whether this is too little, too late, only time will tell. I did see this also a few days and was wondering if the situation has turned so desperate. Because it’s the onion dunno if one should believe it or it’s a hoax. Even in the true/fake news the white man should live while Africans should die 😦
Experiences in the community 