Road Blues

As children we have been brought up to recognise that there are three fundamental needs of human beings, namely, food, clothing, and shelter. The more contemporary approach to this is to add healthcare, sanitation, and education to the list. However, in my view – and most would agree – we need to include good roads to this list as well!

I live in Per-Seraulim, a village comfortably sandwiched between the beautiful coastal village of Colva and the bustling commercial capital of Goa, Margao. My house is off the Margao-Colva main road (nowadays unofficially referred to as the BRICS Road) by around 1.3 kms. This internal road passes through Per-Seraulim connecting the BRICS Road to the Betalbatim village. In essence it is the main road of Per-Seraulim. It is now more-or-less 4 decades since this road was first built and if I correctly remember, since then it has been repaired only once around 20-odd years ago (that too just a cosmetic facelift).

Life went on. The village progressed from being a small corner village to a place with big modern houses and housing projects which drove real estate prices to a whole new level. Life improved. But alas! The road still is a throwback to a time when maybe owning a bicycle put you in the wealthy class. The road makes the place look like one of those god-forsaken places in ultra-rural India, forgotten by time, forgotten by the system, totally off the grid.

Never once has this road seen a layer of hot mix. Every other road in the neighbouring wards/villages has received a facelift but this road seems to be treated like nobody’s child. Politicians have come and gone. Governments have come and gone. But none have, for some reason, taken the initiative to fix this sorry excuse for a road. To make things worse, recently (exactly this time last year), this same road was dug up and under laid with the very ambitious sewerage drain and chambers. Everyone was reassured that the road would get a total overhaul (hot mix et al) after this digging was done and the monsoons did its job of settling the hollows and vacuums created by the digging. But here we are after the last monsoons and fast approaching the coming monsoons and the road is in its worst state ever! It is a new low.

It takes me around two minutes to get from my home to the BRICS Road and trust me when I say this; those two minutes bring out in me the choicest abuses for the system and for our ever-so-complacent MLA. Oh yes! He has the audacity to campaign from door-to-door just last week walking the same road. And when asked why the road is in this state, there he goes passing the buck, a tactic that politicians inherently possess. His quickest response to any query about the road is that the contractor has swindled the system and made away with the money. Classic excuse!

My question to the concerned MLA is that why is he displaying utter impotency when it comes to these trivial issues. Does he think that his complacency is somehow magically making him desirable to the voters this time around too? And most importantly, while roaming the village during the door-to-door campaigning, did he enjoy the walk on the pot-hole ridden, sorry excuse for a road?