Smart city and Dumb rulers.....

The smart city project in Kochi has been on the anvil for more than 17 months now. It is a much anticipated project which could be the much needed boost to Kerala’s bleak business sector. Link to the reprot related to this published by Business Standard:

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/smart-city-stuckland-issue/355804/

 Unfortunately, we seem to lack smart rulers and officials who have the vision and more importantly the commitment to see the project implemented in a timely manner. The governments that we elect in Kerala are so good that they manage to antagonise us within the first two years of its term. This is true for every government which has ruled (rather misruled) Kerala in the past 25 years. None of them have managed to get a second term.

 But, that cannot be a solace to common man who seeks development, wealth and job generation and peace in ‘God’s own country.’ As I said in an earlier post, the opposition invariably takes things for granted. In the election that concluded last week in Kerala, none of the parties paid any attention to such issues. All that seemed to matter is who supported whom.

 It would have been beneficial if it was about whom the people supported and why. Instead, it is about whom did the church support, whom did the Nairs, Ezhavas and other caste support, who was and was not supported by terror suspects like NDF and PDP so on and so forth. The parties were least bothered about the issues that affected the daily life of the citizens and the future generations. Smart city is a classic example of how things got done here in mallu land.

 I recall having read the reports about the plans for a metro rail system in my native place of Kochi while I was a student, more than ten years ago. In the mean time, other cities in India successfully implemented the metro tail project. We Keralites are still arguing, surveying, re-surveying and trying hard on how to waste more money and time on a metro rail project without actually implementing it. There are many such projects that have been scuttled by corrupt politician-businessman-official mafia. We even have a multi-crore irrigation project that was under construction for decades.  With typical Kerala model efficiency we spent crores of rupees and decades on miles of canals and number of dams. In the end, we had the land which was to be irrigated acquired for an international airport.

  The dump and stupid rulers will keep taking us for a ride and we would be happy to oblige, being the donkeys that we are....