HEAVY rains of just a couple of hours also convert the Purani Sabzi Mandi in the Old City area into a vast pool -- almost in the shape of a lake. Thus, during the rainy season, the Purani Sabzi Mandi area witnesses such flooding every now and then -- in the process leaving the users of the place in an impossible-to-sort-out situation. The area stinks with stale and slushy water and becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes. This happens every year during the rainy season. Yet, the civic authorities seem not to wake up and do their duty of ensuring that the Purani Sabzi Mandi area remains free from the menace of flooding.

 

The vast pool of water, thus, represents the cesspool of civic mismanagement, so to say. Year after year. For years. In fact, countless numbers of such areas can be found in the city of Bhopal. The Old City’s share in this is bigger than that of the new city -- which is quite understandable. This is where the issue of a failed civic management comes up. The most unfortunate and most anguishing part is that the civic authorities do not seem to be bothered much about such aspects of urban care that includes design and execution of various projects of public infrastructure. As the loosefooter moves around the city like any other Bhopalite, he realises how serious the problems of urban management are. Actually, most such problems stem from bad design and worse execution. Years and years ago, the Purani Sabzi Mandi came into existence.

 

From those early days, the place never had appropriate drainage systems that would carry away the excess water from heavy rainfall. For a few years, nobody minded the problem. Now, however, the problem has become monstrous as if beyond solution. How long can the people tolerate such a condition that hits them for several weeks every year ? Does the civic administration feel that the common people must continue languishing in hell all their lives ? To this question, there is no answer because the bureaucracy (and its political bosses -- may they belong to any party) has no will to do something to rectify the situation once and for all. This reality prompts the loosefooter to insist that what we see in the Purani Sabzi Mandi in Old City area is nothing but a cesspool of civic mismanagement. The loosefooter is sure that the people in the civic bureaucracy will never like to be charged like this. But is the charge not true ? Is it not logical if the common man in Bhopal thinks like this ? n