Hotels, Traffic Chaos, Garbage & Hypocrisy

 

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“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”
― Noam Chomsky

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”
― Oscar Wilde

Avram Noam Chomsky, which may seem a Russian name yet is very much American, has been a professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy. And Oscar Wilde is a name which everybody who has even the slightest exposure with English literature knows, such is his work. And America is known for its critics who have brain & thinking power & courage to raise voice even against their own, when found wrong. I am deliberately saying wrong & not guilty as when the subject is about infrastructure & society, things can’t be judged to frame somebody guilty as that’s not the purpose, it's about right & wrong which remains the same irrespective of govt, laws, & society as well time! I have seriously given up writing about civic issues as many pens & mikes keep doing it & others says no use but somewhere deep within some hope is still alive in me & more than that when I came across reading such quotes from the greats, I remind myself, if I feel then I must express as that’s one sign of being alive! Problem is, today most people express (thanks to reel mania) whatever they want without thinking, just because they can express & those who seriously think they refrain themselves from expressing due to many aspects, one is fear of backlash about expression, especially expressing right things!

Ohk, sorry for deviation but subject is traffic of Pune & garbage & reason is two news stories (as usual) which caught my attention & made me keep aside my frustration & express or say share! First news was about answer by our State’s Hon CM in assembly session about a question asked by MLA & a petition by residents of Kalyani-Nagar, a decent suburb locality (plz google) about the traffic chaos they are facing due to illegal permit rooms, restaurants & bars in the locality. And another news was about covering citizen’s comments for PMC (Pune Municipal Corporation) getting high ranking in the country for Swachh Abhiyan (Cleanliness drive) & PCMC (Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation) being top ranked in state for same i.e. on cleanliness index! Well, I am sure most people will stop reading here as they will say, we knew, these are routine things & nothing will happen & let’s spend our time doing something more important than this sharing (read as watching reels) & I don’t blame them! Because this, nothing will change, attitude is the real crux of both the news (and many such aspects but sometime next about it) as Hon CM, with figures & facts (well he was speaking in assembly) discarded the plea of Kalyani-Nagar residents saying, not a single pub or restaurant in the locality is illegal, even if they are being run in some bungalows, yet they are with all proper permissions & legal! And he produced a record of complaints about traffic chaos in this locality & they were below ten in numbers in the entire two years (again, on record he said), so no question arises about traffic jams being caused because of these eating joints is what Hon CM said, matter closed! Will take on garbage news later but first let’s look at facts & reply of Hon CM about traffic jams causing eateries first in Kalyani-Nagar & then all around the city!

Before going into the news & hon CM’s stand on the petition of Kalyani Nagar residents, lets see what was the scene, some fifteen / twenty years back here. Kalyani-Nagar was considered as one of the up-market areas with a mix of bungalows & few high end residential apartment buildings, it was a planned layout with cross lanes connecting the main road of Kalyani Nagar & Nagar Road which connects Pune to the north-east part of State & the country. And beyond this locality starts Chandan Nagar, Viman Nagar, Wagholi i.e. Outer Pune. Most affluent citizens preferred Kalyani Nagar as a calm, quiet, green suburb yet well-connected area to the main city especially Koregaon park & camp & airport.  And then areas beyond Kalyani Nagar started being developed as IT Hubs of East Pune i.e. Kharadi & industries also started growing in Ranjangaon which tough was some fifty kilometers away then & now has become part of Pune actually & all these developments started attracting not just rich, effluent, senior, well settled in life but younger genre who got job in all these commercial hubs & has money to spend but no outlets for that & here the trigger got pulled. In the last two decades Kalyani Nagar became the best target for all sorts of eating/ drinking outlets as connoisseurs were there for the same & in numbers & for all types of joints. The locality has ample road side parking places, bungalows with space for posh & semi posh food/ drink joints, the locality is connected to the city as well suburbs, what more you need to make a flourishing business out of all such set up, right? And today Kalyani Nagar offers probably the widest eating options to every segment of society & the problem started for the residents of Kalyani Nagar! Because, the missing thing is, the right urban planning to accommodate this floating crowd & right public transport, resulting in too many vehicles coming at a particular locality at same time; what else can you expect but traffic chaos? Add in that, the regular commuters through these main roads up & down (to & from), either to work or to home, making a perfect example of a traffic mess which no traffic police will be ever able to handle! And then thanks to our “free parking on roads policy” as in entire world in no other city public roads are considered as free parking the way its in Pune city, so all these hoteliers have to do is, employ some drivers for valet parking & then customers are happy just to handover the keys to the valet & enjoy the evening! There are gangs of valet parkers who work in synchronized pattern; these valet teams have two wheelers which they park in such fashion that other customers or people with four-wheeler driver can’t park in the free parking space on the roads & only when a valet driven car comes the two-wheeler guy removes his two-wheeler from the parking lot to accommodate valet gang’s car! This is a common scene around & though legally this can't be considered as crime but morally it is & the only way out is "No Free Parking" anywhere in the city on the roads which our dear govt doesn’t act on & nor the residents of this city demand it, this is why we are biggest hypocrites!

The real problem of Pune’s traffic is not just poor urban planning or public transport or wrong policies or policing, the real problem is our hypocritic attitude towards the traffic as everybody is interested in only their own convenience or comfort & blame others for any discomfort. Everyday morning when I go to my badminton game, on every signal if traffic police is not around then most vehicles don't obey red signals & jump over! And we blame traffic police for incapable policing but in no other country there exists a traffic police where signals are on because citizens respect signals which we don’t! And it's not just about jumping red signals, everyday we (read as citizens) park our vehicles under no parking board, on footpaths & we only oppose the Pay & Park policy. Agreed, our public transport is poor but we have no patience to wait at a signal for one minute, how can we be patient to wait even for ten minutes at a bus stop, right? Public transport will never be at our service at our will the way our two-wheeler or four-wheeler does but then if fifty lakh citizens think in this way then its fifty lakh vehicles on road to which no traffic management or road network can handle, that’s why we are hypocrites, is my point of sharing!  And then we blame hotels/ restaurants for traffic chaos but in my society every evening I see Zomato/ Swiggie delivery people getting parcels to the residents, do we ever think where these parcels are coming from! As we may not be going to eat out & to jam the roads but the parcel boys do it for us, this we conveniently forget! We want hotels, we want to eat outside & drink & have fun & we want free parking on the roads & we won’t follow traffic rules but we don’t want traffic created by them, who are we fooling, is my point of sharing! This doesn’t mean there won’t be any solution, what this means is, traffic chaos won’t be solved by just shutting few food joints but we need to execute the solution from all the ends in which each of us has a role to play & unless we as citizens won’t accept this till that time it will be just hypocritic blame game!

Now about the other news i.e. garbage or Swachh Abhiyan ranking of the city. Most of the cities have wet garbage processing vermicomposting yet in most of the societies it's non-functional & we blame govt for garbage overflowing on road. Leave vermi-composting, many societies don’t even segregate dry & wet garbage & just throw their garbage in garbage collecting vans by PMC & if one day it doesn’t come for any reason, the garbage of the society keeps laying at the entrance or in some duct & we expect the city to remain clean by its own! No society or commercial establishments allows garbage bins or public toilets near their entrance or in their vicinity & reason is PMC doesn’t keep it clean, agreed. We spend millions for our interiors but we don’t come together & collect money & maintain the public lavatory or garbage bin near our society clean, because we pay tax, right? And that’s why we are free to blame PMC or govt for incapability of keeping our city clean. I see everyday people throwing garbage at their will on the roads, in the river & wherever possible but don’t take any effort to segregate it & process in their society, & not just this we even don’t take any efforts to reduce the generation of the garbage itself & yet we expect our city to be clan & curse PMC/ PCMC for failing in their job, this is hypocrisy, is my point of sharing!

I know many of the readers will say, I am also part of such a lot & yes, I am but on a personal note, I try my best not to break any traffic rules & not to make more garbage by myself & try to make others aware, at least that much I can do! Friends, may it be traffic or garbage, if we want to solve the problem then we must accept our part in that problem, till then keep naming others & let the problem multiply, adios with this note (warning)!

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Sanjay Deshpande 

smd156812@gmail.com

Sanjeevani Dev.

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