The Invictus

I have a theory. And 'cos you came here, you will get to hear all about it. I call it The Grandiose Nation Theory, and its' somewhat similar to the Escapist theory (by the end of the post you will know that too!).

I think we Indians, as a nation, are more focussed on doing BIG, grandiose things which have a smaller chance of ever becoming reality, as opposed to working on smaller, equally effective ones that have a REAL chance to happening. We have a traffic problem, we clamour and conspire for huge, awe-inspiring flyovers. We watch a poorly performing Indian Cricket / Hockey team, we want them to not just improve on their performances, but go and bring "home" the World cup. We have a water scarcity, we go ahead and plan for huge dams that wipe out several hundred villages.

And as it usually happens in India, these grandiose plans rarely make the jump from drawing boards to reality. And when they do, they get stuck as half-baked projects, ala Flyovers in Bangalore.

All this when we could have very easily achieved the intended objective through simpler, less drastic but more effective means. Means that would not only deliver, but do so at a fraction of the cost.

Let me take an example here - The worsening traffic situation in Bangalore's roads and the remedies that have been bandied about. We seem to prefer

1. Flyovers - more of them, bigger, more complex structures, of course all of these built in super-fast time.

2. 4-lane roads with no potholes

3. Cutting down thousands of trees that line Bangalore's roads, all so that a few hundred more vehicles can continue to violate traffic rules.

All these solutions appear to be unnecessary drastic actions - ones that you normally do not take recourse to without first exhausting all possible simple measures. And believe me, in Bangalore (could be true of anywhere in India), we just haven't tried these simpler options.

You see, Bangalore is a city that is mostly laid out in a grid-like arrangement. You have "Main Roads" and "Cross Roads" that run perpendicular directions (similar to the Avenues and Streets in the US). One of the advantages of this kind of an arrangement is that you will always have more than one way or route to take you from point A to point B. If there is a traffic jam on the shortest and most obvious route, you can always take the next "Main" or the "Cross". Elementary, so far. But the problem is the myopic view that our urban planners take. They would rather focus on ONE single road (say for example Bannerghatta Main Road) and then pour money and effort trying to build a flyover / 4-lane road / underpass etc etc in order to decongest the traffic situation. When all they need to do is ensure that the parallel roads are properly asphalted so that they can act as diversions and take the load off the congested road. But they will not do that - they will let the alternative roads lie in dirt,stones and potholes - while they focus on one more grand vision.

On a connected note, I think this is rooted in our penchant for escapism. Of course, we all want to believe that a messiah will come and deliver us from all our troubles one fine day. Till then we will crib and crib, but not do anything to change it. We crib about hopeless traffic situation, but continue to contribute to it with our utter lack of road sense; We sure hope that the BIG flyover will solve all our traffic woes, of course. We crib about corruption in society, but don't do anything about it. We hope that someday, some big guy will come and cleanse it all for us, of course. We just are not capable of taking small but meaningful steps OURSELVES.

No wonder till then, we will have planned flyovers and leftover flyovers. And traffic jams. Mera Bharat Mahan!