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 | BRT has blinded Delhi Govt Our Correspondent If there were a competition to choose the most unresponsive government in India, the Sheila Dikshit regime would win quite easily. For her Government has scaled new peaks in unresponsiveness. First, it was the Blueline menace. Hundreds of deaths, countless accidents, public outcry, media outrage and judicial interference failed to persuade the state Government to scrap the killer buses. Ditto with the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system. As we wrote earlier, everything about this project is bad and wrong. Yet, the Government refuses to dump it. The end of BRT would be big relief for commuters, traffic police and the taxpayer. But a regime that has fallen in love with awful ideas continues to strain the public exchequer. Such is the Government's obsession with BRT that it has asked the Transport Department and DIMTS, which implements BRT, somehow salvage the quixotic project. Money is not a problem. The Government would not hesitate in spending Rs 200 crore on constructing a flyover, so that the Rs 60-crore pilot stretch becomes functional. State Transport Minister Haroon Yusuf continues to hope against hope. He said, "I am fully confident that the corridor will be a success — in fact some preliminary surveys have shown that more than 80 per cent road users, including car owners, are very happy with the way things are at present." Which surveys, Minister? Were they conducted by Dinesh Mohan and Geetam Tiwari, the IIT, Delhi, professors who are the authors of BRT in India? The Sheila Dikshit Government is not only blind to the problems of people but it is also insincere in its commitments. The Chief Minister had announced that work on the rest of the BRT stretches would be discontinued till the glitches were removed from the pilot stretch. But work continues. Even after this flouting of the CM's orders was reported in the media, men and machines were busy on the proposed BRT stretches. Yusuf had said, "Strict orders have been given out to the contractors to ensure that all construction activity is stopped immediately. No work is going on anywhere on the stretch." Either the Government was not competent to get its orders enforced or it was not willing to stall operations on other BRT corridors. The BRT fiasco in the Capital has scared the Union Urban Development Ministry, which has decided to review 14 such projects that it proposed in eight cities. But the state Government obstinately clings to the idiotic corridors. Over the BRT issue, the state Government has exposed itself as stubborn, incompetent, unresponsive, profligate and insincere. It may have to pay dearly in the forthcoming Assembly elections. Posted on : 5/3/2008 Mail this article to your friend |