Editor of ‘The Hitavada’ Vijay Phanshikar, in his article in ‘Footloose in Nagpur’ dated May 7, has raised a very pertinent issue of license to mess up with public interest. Any civic planning becomes foolproof when it is scrutinised and modified at various levels by domain experts. In case of Indian Railways, the preliminary planning is done at the Divisional Railway Manager’s Office (DRM), assessed and reviewed at the General Manager’s Office (GM) and then finally ratified by the Railway Board. Such a multilayer planning yields a perfect end product.

 

Therefore, any preliminary-level civic planning requires multilayer scrutiny before funds are allocated for executing the project. Why this simple procedure is not adopted by any of the civic authorities is beyond the imagination of Nagpurians. Maybe, the egoistic attitude of the civic agencies is a contributing factor in a single layer planning by the civic agencies. The end product should be visualised before allocating the precious public funds. Secondly, if any civic project is executed with some flaws in the end product, the rectification should be carried out on priority basis. In case of Kawarapeth flyover blunder, the civic authorities have not yet fixed any timeframe for rectification in spite of over one year of its completion and dedication to public usage.

 

If execution of civic projects and rectification of blunders take years together to finish, the city loses precious time and public funds besides severe inconvenience to all the commuters. The old proverb “Jack of all trades is master of none” implies to many of the civic planners. Any overburdened and multitasking officer should not be entrusted with the task of clearing the preliminary planning. The question is who will convince the civic agencies to allow multilevel scrutiny of preliminary planning especially by external domain experts? And, who will guide the fund sanctioning authorities to allot funds only to those projects which have been cleared by domain experts?