Lesson of Expressway's Nightmare!

 

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“Some beautiful paths can't be discovered without getting lost.” ― Erol Ozan

“From this point forward, you don’t even know how to quit in life.” ~ Aaron Lauritsen

“I love road trips, they teach me patience, lots of it’… Me.

Oh k, actually in all philosophy/ spiritual stories, the path is very important object as it decides your fate is what most philosophies say or believe & no wonder when my sharing is about a particular Path, I took help of such wise words! Though the sharing is not philosophical but sheer technical & logical which are effective only when used in combination & if we don’t use them in that way then the outcome is what Mumbaikar & Punekar (later more) witnessed in the first week of second month of the New Year i.e. chaos on Expressway connecting two major cities not just in Maharashtra but even in entire country! I am sure many of us have been reading/ seeing (Insta/FB) about the mega (even that’s a small term) traffic jam on the expressway because a propane(explosive liquid gas) carrying tanker got toppled in the ghat section. BTW, traffic jam also is not appropriate term because it’s used when the traffic gets slowed down & gets cleared in some hours, at least on the very same day but what happened on expressway on 4^th Feb 26, is traffic-dead as the vehicles started moving back on the path after nearly two days i.e. forty hours, that can’t be a just traffic jam, right?

I haven’t written a while about civic issues as I started feeling like the common voter as what use of voting if all parties are going to come together after election result, same way what’s use of writing about civic issues as its not the govt doesn’t know about them, its just the govt doesn’t care anymore about it, may it be of any party! The govt looks after only those issues which it thinks are important & no more what is important for the common man is also important for the govt!  Rather recently I came across a quote about democracy by a renowned economist, “it’s by few people, of few people & for few people”! Yet there is something named hope & more than that still some fight has left in me which makes me write & outcome is such sharing! Coming back to our dear Mumbai Pune ExpressWay (Eway, I will use as short form) which was is news right from the beginning since the day it was announced, not even built as what’s need, we have old Mumbai Pune highway, why not widen it & why spend so many thousand crores for a road of mere 100 km length & all such. Yet thanks to the then govt & our Roadkari Minister who is at present Union Minister, was State minister then, the Eway came into existence. And indeed, it was a big thing twenty-five years back when our most highways were in bad state & commuting via road was a nightmare. On such a background here is a highway, with no crossings, three special lanes for driving & you can drive at 100km per hour speed, was something unheard of & Eway was soon popular with travellers & so was it topped on the road accidents also, that too fatal! Again, there was hohallah over the making of Eway & its faulty design (which wasn’t the case) & it’s been called Death-Way also but frankly most of the accidents were the outcome of over speeding & not understanding driving on such roads! This driving licence system & commuters training for preparing them to drive on Eway is first lacuna of the entire transport system or say govt! As you can’t just blame drivers when they haven’t ever made to learn discipline while driving & even today such discipline teaching system is not in place on the Eway which is main cause of the chaos it caused. While entering on Eway all one has to do is pay Toll tax that’s all & you are through. Nobody checks eligibility or ability of the driver nor the vehicle is the first thing which we must start now. As most of the takers for super heavy vehicle driving needs far more skill than that of normal domestic vehicles but we don’t have any system which assures that skill checking. And because of the poor road conditions on other roads these super heavy vehicles don’t gather speed so overturning or such incidents are less but on roads like Eway sheer weight & volume of such vehicles becomes most risky if they gather speed! So, first & foremost form a checking system at least for super-heavy vehicles while they enter on Eway is a must thing! At the same time constant awareness programs drills along the Eway is a must with displays as even the smaller vehicles also need to follow discipline & not to do sharp lane cuttings causing sudden hurdles in the path of heavy vehicles which eventually skid or overturn by application of sudden breaks due to small vehicle’s entry in their lane!

Now, about the arrangements to avoid crisis or accidents as knowing our Indian mentality awareness is hardly taken seriously but use drone or on when squad to check the wrong doings on Eway & see that such vehicles are arrested at next tool gate or pulled down & fined heavily on the spot before they become a cause for accident! I have been travelling for nearly all the twenty-five years on Eway since it started but not once has my vehicle been stopped for such checking, which shows absence of any checking system, which is a must now! As, why wait for accidents to happen, when we know the cause in most cases, is my question! Accident is something which happens even after taking all the precautions & following rules but if that is not in place then its negligence or ignorance or even crime, which is happening at present on Eway! Here one aspect comes in picture, whose responsibility it is to maintain law & order on driving on Eway as numbers of crucks spoil the game so are here Highway police, RTO (pls google), Traffic Police & the company who has got contract of collecting toll & the govt itself & then we have Collectors & Police of nearly three Districts from where this Eway cut across. In the end, everybody just points fingers at others. Rather this highway police thing itself is needed to close down & let the local police manage their individual sections as per boundary of respective districts. At the same time, the sole single authority must be RTO, because the police are supposed to detect crime & not to stop accidents, in the entire world traffic police isn’t a special squad as they are there just to keep an eye on law offenders, to manage traffic & keep decline & check vehicles, is a job of RTO as well of traffic planners, so make them one point authority for anything on Eway & then held them responsible. Even the private toll company also must work under the RTO guidelines & if they fail to do so then hang concerned RTO team (not literally) as then at least we will have one single authority to deal with for RTO issues.

Now coming to improvisations needed to be made on Eway from construction angle & for this make a joint team of RTO, as well Highway Authorities & Traffic Planners, Traffic Activists (Tanmay Pendse for e.g.) & ask them to make a report about all civil improvisations needed to be done on Eway in one month maximum or sack the committee & make new one as this is not some rocket science but sheer common sense blended with engineering! At the same time, ask this committee members to travel as common commuters by Eway by all vehicles i.e. domestic, private, public & even by heavy vehicles also as then they will understand the problems commuters face, which VIPs’ doesn’t have to! There has to be removable central barricades after every 5 km so in case of jam we can allow vehicles to cross the opposite lanes & ease out the traffic as well the rescue vehicles can reach the accident or mishap spot in less time by using opposite lanes also, is the logic. As well make such cross exits in special colours as well with signages. The so-called Emergency Phone system along the Eway is a joke as they weren’t in use since the start but nobody cares then & nobody cares even now with cell phones in! But at least make a charging line available on both sides of Eway with charging points so it can be used to charge not just cell phones but batteries of E-vehicles which causes more problems to add on the traffic jam because of battery discharge! At the same time basic amenities like public toilets must be there along the Eway at every 10km & it’s a sorry state that we have to mention clean public toilets which are the basic needs of any commuter, especially women travellers! At the same time, I am sure all these things or a few of them must be in the contract of the company which collects the toll but who is monitoring it, again nobody knows, which is the main reason for the failure of infrastructure on Eway which got exposed when such a crisis happened!

Now about the action team in case of an accident or crisis or even natural disaster, again the same point there must be one single team responsible to take control & lead & this team must be known to all the segments, especially the commuters. Right now, the scene is, the person who is paying tax means the client of Eway was clueless to whom to contact for help, leaving away responsibility & this definitely isn’t a good sign of governance! At the same time with a budget of some thousand crores per year for contract of this road why can’t be there a helicopter available exclusively for the Eway surveillance as not just about keeping on eye but this can be used for lifting patients who has got caught in the traffic or even to make the team of specialists reach at crisis site such as propane tanker!

Finally, the govt as well as many others are busy blaming delay of the so-called missing link which is nothing but one more Eway portion & had that been in function this crisis could have been avoided & I defer on this! The main problem of Eway or any National or State highway is not road width (it is in some cases) or poor infrastructure but the numbers of vehicles which are increasing everyday & most of them are private vehicles along with heavy vehicles. And the sole reason is our govt’s worst planning for strengthening public transport for domestic travellers as well as commercial goods. Why can't the govt run every 10 mins public buses on expressway which will start from the outskirts of Pune & will drop commuters on the outskirts of Mumbai & from there local commuting public transport to central part of the respective cities, is a question which only the govt can answer! As there are only four trains (if I am not wrong) in morning & in evening dedicated to Pune Mumbai travel, make it twenty trains, as all such only can reduce the load on the Eway or else every five years you will have to find some more missing links & one day there will be nothing left to build but roads & still the vehicles will keep jamming those new found links also!

To conclude all I will say, imagine had this propane carrying tanker been overturned inside of any tunnel on the Eway or some vehicle had caught fire in the tunnel, that would have been a nightmare & planning is something which doesn’t wait for such nightmare to happen but prepares us to deal with the same in advance, is my purpose of sharing, adios with this note!

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Sanjay Deshpande 

smd156812@gmail.com

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about finding a Right Home/ Office in Pune, at YouTube link below & share if liked...

 

https://youtu.be/27j3I3rwGPQ?si=-ODYBxVI2Dl_C345

 

Please do visit my blog links below to read about real estate & home buying! 

https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2025/12/pune-real-estate-in-2026.html

https://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/2024/12/2025.html

Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way (Click link below) 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345

For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below

www.punecorporation.org

Think Green, Think Life

www.sanjeevanideve.com / https://junglebelles.in/

परंपरा, प्रतिष्ठा, अनुशासन; Union Budget 2026

 

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“Most people aren’t broken because of income—they’re broke because of ignorance.”

― Joseph C. Kunz Jr

“Find your values, align your vision, charge your passion, connect with your purpose & then make a Budget.”

― Sabrina M J Constantin

“My understanding about the Budget is, it’s about not how much I will earn but about how much I can spend”__ Me

 

Keeping due respect to financial wizards like Joseph Cruz & Sabrina Constantine, whose words rescued me to start the sharing about the budget (Union Budget or country’s budget), a subject which makes me sick, nervous (Just the Maths used to make me in my engg days)! Yet, budget is something which is the backbone of my work systems & long back when I started as a fresh trainee engineer, I have learned the importance of the term budget! Though the sharing is about country’s budget which is as complex as “Climate Change” yet everybody can have his or her own say about it & being a businessman by myself I too have mine, & when your journalist friend asks you to pen down your thoughts about it, I did dig a bit in the subject & I could actually make a quote about it, in my own words too, lol! Agreed, a budget is a complex thing, especially for an engineer who could barely read his own company’s balance sheet but then that’s the bitter fact about financial literacy of this country’s education system as managing money in the right way is the last thing they taught you in normal education! All our education is so much focused on only to earn money but how to utilize or manage that money nobody teaches you & here is where budget’s importance comes in the picture, is my main reason for sharing!

Ohk, coming to understanding of the budget which is like a yearly ritual of our country & its impact on the share market which often is emotional more & logical less! Keeping in tune with this tradition, on budget day the share market crashed by nearly 2000 pints (plz google for meaning) but in the next three days it again bounced back to level from where it crashed, & I think this means it has nothing to do with the budget, logic, right? When its real estate, I wonder why just Finance Minister, not even our local bodies give any damn to our industry, so where it’s a Development Plan or TDR policy, if the govt is not taking in to consideration the people in business (read as builders) how can you expect the same govt will take builder’s consultation in thing like budget! And the outcome is that this year’s budget directly doesn’t give anything to real estate, a plain & simple outcome by a common engineer builder like me! Yet I tried to decode some aspects of it for other fellow builders so we can at least raise our voice (whom I am fooling, anyways)!

 

Coming to my understanding (read as take away) of Budget 26, I remembered the famous dialogue from the Bachchan-SRK starrer Mohabbatein & in the movie SRK used to mock it as a strong building standing on a hollow foundation!! Same way for real estate or say housing, this budget talks big but stands on thin air. Here, the 3 pillars i.e. Parampara, Pratishtha, Anushasan, are replaced by 3 Kartawys i.e. Building Capacity of People, Fulfilling People's Aspirations & Subka Saath Subka Vikas concept! Great, but like in the another Bollywood hit Sholay, when Dharampaaji climbs on overhead water tank and shouts "good bye gaonwalo" on which one villager explains another villager, meaning of good bye saying, "jub angrej loag kahi jate hai tub wo goodbye bolte hai", on this the other villager asks, "par ye angrej loag jate kaha hai?", on that the first villager turns his face away for having no answer! Same way, my question is, who & where are these people, who supposedly focus on Hon FM in the budget 26!! Definitely, they are not from real estate for sure as in the provisions of lakhs of crores of rupees for AI, Production, Railways, Tourism, Public Health, Creative Content, Défense, Education & all such fronts, FM madam seems has forgotten all this employment as well existing people will need homes & has forgotten that there is an industry which makes these homes!! Many will say, direct or indirect ultimately its real estate which will get benefit as need for space will increase & half of that sentence is true but that's lifetimes truth as space will always be in demand but how those spaces are going to be made or created i.e. Real estate, what about it??

About some other provisions, individual tax limits are always an important aspect for buying home for salaried urban People & with no major elections ahead in Central India (read as Maharashtra) no concrete thing is there for this class which is client of real estate, so not even indirect benefit is there for real estate or housing!! Infrastructure provision is another weak link, as you will connect Pune Mumbai but what about traffic, water, drainage in these cities as well public transport within & outward to these cities?? Rare minerals, NRI investment limits, Smart Universities & Amrit Yojana for small towns infra, well, high time we must acknowledge Metro cities like Pune, Bengaluru as separate industries in itself & Growth Engines for which no direct provisions are made! Then let’s take in to account commuting between major cities which indeed is need for residents of these cities but just making high speed trains won’t achieve anything as take example of Pune -Nagpur route, there are eight railways on this route & all are full almost throughout the year, means we need to study the commuting volume & then increase the intensity (more rails) on the routes which has never happened, making people dependant of private vehicles of spend more for air travel! Rather we need new tracks, more trains, get over the age-old concept of one Up & one Down rail track system as why can’t we have four laned railway tracks, as it will save land acquisition also & will help in increasing the carrying capacity of the railways. But for such thoughts you need to take into account what is actually pinching to the people in the industry as we are year, nose, eyes of end users, just take us in confidence while making a budget, is my appeal to Hon FM!

 

As one main aspect of the budget as per FM madam is, EoD i.e. Ease of Doing Business but that's one of the vaguest (deceptive) tag lines, as what are concrete provisions for making that happen & for real estate, nothing on that! Rather on the very next day of Budget announcement Pune Municipal Corporation issued a circular saying hereafter to demolish existing buildings for development there will be a NOC to be obtained from PMC, means one more hurdle, so, where is Ease of Doing Business, is my question to Hon FM! And such there are hundreds of speed breakers, hurdles, or obstacles everywhere, need of obtaining a NA certificate even when your project is in a residential zone & weirdest is obtaining an NOC of mining for excavation of building foundations, just great! Joke is, Hon FM mentions Ease of Doing business but why can’t she order or make direct provisions which will make that ease thing happen, is another question to her!  Real estate needs policies, fund provision, priority finance, funding for purchasing land which is raw material, & GST reduction if you want to make Homes affordable, nothing on it!! And here the main problem is neither Hon FM nor any govt official (read as rulers) feel the need of taking the opinion of businessmen in account for this Budget thingy as they think they know it all & that’s our country’s biggest problem, especially for real estate! Take a simple example of construction material or infra items, with high rise buildings is a fact, we need a special type of shuttering made of Aluminium called as My One & which is made by a Korean company. This we all know from decades but nothing has been done to manufacture this shuttering material in our country as giving tax exemptions to the same, which will actually make construction cheaper & help in reducing home prices! There are thousands of such suggestions out of which 18% GST on labour contracts is also one weird thing as construction industry supports probably the maximum numbers of lower classes (financially) of the society & burdening this class with 18% GST is seriously wrong & that directly adds to the cost of home making, rather now a days even profit margins also are not that high in contracting; in nutshell, in any civil labour contract, the govt earns more than the contractor, if my understanding is wrong then I am sorry but my engineering logic says so!

Here one will say the govt earns through these taxes & use that money for infrastructure, but again speaking about real estate, Hon FM, please check the conditions local bodies put on the developer for any project! As right from providing water or drainage or road like basic facilities, for which again the local body (read as govt) charges to the builder, an undertaking is taken from the builder that all these will be provided by the builder only to the occupants! Wow, just wow, as if you call this as Ease of Doing Business then what it will be in your directory Normal Business, I just can’t imagine! And then again my basic question, about providing infra to the cities, why the budget doesn’t make it mandatory to the civic bodies to keep record & mandate for utilizing funds which has been allotted to them via budget & maintain transparency in the same, as if that money if for the citizens 9read as businessmen too) then we must be kept in loop as all these development are directly related to fate of real estate in respective region or city, right? As well why the Finance ministry doesn’t put local bodies under their scanner or have direct control on them when they allocate crores of budget money to these bodies as leave apart actual execution of infra projects the DPs’ of cities, towns, regions kept lingering for years & add to that weirdest policies related to ownership documents, revenue record lacunas, buying a land & developing it becomes game only for moneyed ones or the ones with muscle power & this is the reason of failure of making affordable homes for the needy ones which is main reason for illegal construction! All this can be stopped with just a little bit of openness of accepting suggestions from some sane minds in real estate which never happens & that’s why budget after budget real estate gets more disappointed only, is a fact! The way the govt keeps tab on wrong doings via ED, DRI & CBI, same way high time a special task force State wise to be created for monitoring progress of infra projects especially in cities which are being done under Central Govt funding as then only such budget provisions will help real estate!

 

And the biggest hurdle for a right (I am not saying good) budget for real estate is the misconception that real estate is like a gold mine & everybody always earns a lot more eventually! It was right a few years back but even Golden Egg laying hen also dries up if you cut her down (plz google for the phrase & its meaning) which has happened with real estate. Agreed a land is probably the only commodity which doesn’t have expiry date or depreciation concept but what about the person who has holding that land & trying to develop it, he can surely go bankrupt, right? And if you see today’s newspapers, most of their central pages are full with acquisition or auction notices of real estate assets by the banks as well as financial institutions, that’s the real indicator (read as mirror) of our economy which is directly related with budget! Last but least, about finance to the real estate industry, there are special loan rates for housing finance but no such for the builder is the biggest joke regarding policies of FM towards real estate & yet we expect the homes to become affordable, just wow! To add there are policies like no GST for ready possession homes means to make people wait till the project gets completed making it costlier with the interest cost! I wonder if a layman like me can understand or see these hurdles in real estate, why can’t Hon FM & her team see it, is all I can say! If we really want to make homes affordable to all then the way hon FM has made provision to create a committee for improvements in banking, please make one such committee under herself or Hon PM for real estate or else every day millions of people sleep in homes which they don’t own but to wish to own someday, will remain a dram only for them!

To conclude about Union Budget 2026 from real estate’s view, I think we should change name of "Real" Estate to "Subka Real Estate” as then only we can have some hope for the real estate going by the tag line, i.e. “Subka" Sath "Subka" Vikas (I know it’s a PJ but that’s all I can think for now)..!!

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Sanjay Deshpande 

smd156812@gmail.com

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about finding a Right Home/ Office in Pune, at YouTube link below & share if liked...

 

https://youtu.be/27j3I3rwGPQ?si=-ODYBxVI2Dl_C345

 

Please do visit my blog links below to read about real estate & home buying! 

https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2025/12/pune-real-estate-in-2026.html

https://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/2024/12/2025.html

Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way (Click link below) 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345

For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below

www.punecorporation.org

Think Green, Think Life

www.sanjeevanideve.com / https://junglebelles.in/

Cycle Race & City which was Capital of Cycles!

 

                                                      

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“Without culture, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.”― Albert Camus

“You know, bicycling isn't just a matter of balance," I said. "It's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground.”― Susan Vreeland

“Any sports, even that of paddling, is in a way a race with your own self, to do better”-- Me

Well, the quotes by Camus & Vreeland may confuse you as to what's the connection of cycling & culture or society but then I am glad to get opportunity to write about both because if sport is my passion, then culture/ society is directly related to my bread & butter i.e. real estate! So, thanks to Grand Cycle Race (I should mention Bajaj but I am not an influencer not Mr Bajaj is going to pay me for mentioning their name so be it, lol) which was conducted recently in our beloved Pune city or say region & my sharing is not to describe the cycle racing but its impact or say connection with city at large! But before that “Dilese” congratulations to Mr.Collector as administrative head of district & Municipal as well Police Commissioners of Pune & Pimpri Chinchwad & Superintendent of District Police & entire ground staff of these organizations! This will sound like a builder speaking from political dais where every name & mention of credit given to that name matters more than the speech of the speaker but let it be! Why I mentioned these names is not because they matter for my business (they do btw) but what they all must have gone through not just the last week which saw 400 plus kilometers of cycle race through Pune region but even nearly a month before that which saw election of both city’s civic elections also! And the pressure of work can be imagined only by those who have seen all these organizations (read as depts) closely & I am one such that’s why!

Ohk, the formalities of niceties are done & let’s come to our subject which is the cycle race & city’s culture as the Gen Z may not be even knowing that few decades back this city was called as “Cyakalinche Shahar” (Bicycle City) in the entire country & my genre may be last of it, which has witnessed it in reality & not AI! When I got down at Pune Railway Station in the late 80”s for my engineering education, all I was carrying, a bag, some books, a mattress & a cycle. Thirty-five years down the line the city is now called Two-wheeler’s city & cycles are only for upper few that too for exercise & not as means of commuting. Even the poorest segment of society doesn’t look at this most economical means of commuting i.e. cycle, as effective or say useful & on such background when a cycle race was arranged right on the working days that too after the hustle of elections just over, the event has got mixed reactions from the entire city & which is my subject of sharing! The moment this race was declared as usual (that’s synonymous with Pune now) controversy started, right from who is conducting this race & for whose benefit to why suddenly this love for cycling, all this under whose instructions & why on working days & social media was abuzz with these posts, even newspapers too! What I came to understand, the major lead was taken by Hon Collector & under his leadership, other depts followed. This means the driving force was or is none other than the State govt because Collector represents govt, right? And may be because of the PMC/PCMC elections the political figures as well rulers kept distance from the event as it could be considered as breach of Code of Conduct. This in itself was a boon (by me) as the entire cycle race event was in total control of administration without any intervention for individual or party benefit & that’s one reason for the success of the event!

Before this event no such type of race was ever conducted in the Pune region (at least I am not aware of) rather I don’t remember reading about such anywhere in the country. In my college days there used to be the famous Mumbai _Pune cycle race which was a yearly event but that was mostly out of city limits & slowly as the traffic increased & expressway came into existence the fame & popularity of this race faded away & today not many even know such a race of cycling ever existed! On this background to make a fully dedicated cycling race an event & where international players are involved & to make it pass through our city roads & in rural parts, well it indeed was a challenge which administration took on & full marks to them for the same. Because their riders are not our normal leisure or work-related paddlers & speed of cycling can be nearly 60km/ hour & at such speed even a small pebble in the path or an uneven surface of road can cause serious accidents. Means for the track of nearly 400 plus kilometers you will have to assure a road surface which will stand till end of this race & this is not overnight job (which usually our local bodies are used to get done) just to face-lift for any Big Leader’s visit to the city, but we have to make roads on which international cyclers are supposed to race & one mistake means damage of country’s name on world map, now you will understand the tough part of conducting the race. Silently the entire system was working overnight & meticulously the entire road from where the racers were to pass was worked on & actual as they say in Marathi, “aarasha sarkhe raste” (mirror like surfaced roads) were prepared & outcome is not a single mishap in the entire race because of quality of the road, that’s success!

If this was achievement for the engineering team then the bigger challenge awaited for Police or say enforcement team as for nearly four days all these roads needed to remain empty to cyclists to pass from them freely & in a country ( read as City) where people don’t even bother red signals & put their as well others’ lives at risk, you can imagine the impossibility of the job that the race should be conducted without any pedestrian or two where or stray animal entering suddenly in the path of racers! And on top of that the race was scheduled on the working days that too after elections, so the roads were bound to get crowded like hell & Punekars are over sensitive about traffic & water! Here, the police did a sensible thing (well, many won’t like it) which was. To close the major roads from morning 10 am to evening 6 pm on the day of the race in the particular patch of that day’s route! This decision wasn’t easy as there was a heavy public cry they had to face & on top of it the police barricaded the entire such stretch to avoid crossing on these roads which only fuelled the frustration of the public! I will come to the negative aspect of this action later but trust me, knowing the way Punekars drive or behave on the streets, what other solution could you have thought, had you been put in charge of controlling the safety aspect of the race? As the way we drive or behave even when traffic signals are on, imagine what we would have done with getting mixed with the cyclists of the race, it would have been chaos & that's why the road closers'!

And lastly the beautification via flower pots & signages & murals along the roads & in chowks, well if you see those images, you will feel you are in some city of Europe, such was the work done! No wonder many of the foreign players who have participated in the race were thrilled & happy with the arrangement as well the way the crowd greeted them during the entire race. As most of them had never been to India & unlike other sports which are played in some single confined venue, here the players had to travel across the entire segment of the city as well country side & what they saw, what they felt wasn’t as bad as they must have heard about our so-called poor country, this is the real success of the race, is what I feel! At the same time, this race made people realize once again the Golden Days of this city of paddling as well the way people celebrated the passing of cyclists from their locality shows our culture. In a way this can be “Savaii Gandharva” (plz google) of cycling adding one more feather in the cap of the cultural capital of the State! As these types of events are important for the city at large not just for name & fame of the city but for the society to realize fun & importance of the fitness which comes through such games as well as the bonding, because a sport doesn’t recognize any man-made boundaries such as caste, religion, gender, or profession but treats every player as equal!

Now, coming to flip side of the race (actually there isn’t any) as why people (read as Janata) get frustrated or angry about such events is, it’s not they don’t love sport or want their city name to be put on the world map but why it needs a race to make our roads better as well the infrastructure, is the point which matters most! If the administration can make roads of such length in good & perfect condition as well which can manage the traffic then why doesn't it do it on an everyday basis where people get stuck for hours in the traffic on the very same roads! One major aspect about reduction in numbers of cycles on normal days is, road safety as a cycle doesn’t provide much safety in case of road accident which are increasing by day due to reckless driving of Pune people which is one more aspect the govt system must look after! Because, no two minds about benefits of using a cycle for regular use but what about mine or my kid’s safety while using a cycle on the city roads, is the question citizens ask, which the system must answer by action & not mere words!  Same is about beautification, the beautiful flower-pots which were present during race time, were removed from the roads & chowks, immediately after the race & again these spaces will be covered by illegal parking or banners or street vendors, why is this so? Why can’t we have the same beautiful road side views yearlong & why it's only for the duration of the race (Same happened in G 30 or 32 summit) & not on other times is what people want to know! At the same time even for the race the conditions of public toilets along the entire track were pathetic (sorry but fact) & this is something we must do needfully together as public toilets on the roads are like mirrors of the city, do I need to elaborate more! Here, we the citizens are equally responsible as when it comes to honouring traffic rules, we ourselves never do it on our own & about civic sense or owning the public spaces, well, lesser we speak is better! For last eight years, we maintain a public toilet at Nal Stop, Karve road & every month even the bulbs, not just flower pots, get stolen from there, such is our attitude towards the public property, so we can’t blame only the administration, is equally true! 

To conclude, all I will say is, the Grand Cycle race is over & we (read as entire system & society) have enough time till the next race to retrospect about our attitude towards our city & not just some sports as that will only decide whether we have really benefited (read as learned) from such race or its just one more showpiece event for the city; adios with this note!

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Sanjay Deshpande 

smd156812@gmail.com

Sanjeevani Dev.

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