Of official road-blocks between west and east Nagpurs

 

 

 

These road-blocks have been there for the past endless months. Each time people travel from this part of the city to that part, they run into these road-blocks of development -- as ‘The Hitavada’ showed in its CityLine edition of July 22, 2025. For record, the administration appears to be engaged in developmental projects. For fact, in the name of development, what people encounter are road-blocks that appear to have no immediate resolution. If this is the definition of ‘development’, then the city is being developed. But can this be taken as a standard of development ? To this questions, most Nagpurians will say a resounding “NO”. Every Nagpurian is now tired of this over-stretched process, unending, ill-planned and badly-managed process of development.

 

The loosefooter asked a few experts in the subject of project management about the sluggishness that defines developmental work in the city. Each of those persons said in union, in effect, that the city of Nagpur is in bad hands and the people in the civic administration just do not know how to do their assigned work properly. What is surprising in Nagpur is the process of development is sluggish even though the city has a few great leaders of the Government at the State and the national levels. But none of them seems to realise what is actually happening on the ground -- of their own city that has been electing them for decades on end.

 

If the loosefooter says that the people should stop voting for such people, he would be accused of indulging in political propaganda. But the loosefooter is clear in his views that he is least worried about who or which party rules the city -- so long as it is managed well. And since the city of Nagpur is not being managed well and its collective leadership is messing up with its vitals, then such people (in power) need to be sent home. Unfortunately, electoral democracy is a slow, five-year process that calls for people’s patience for those periods.

 

So, once the elections are over, the people in general can do nothing to change the situation. If the people in power are sluggish and not appropriately committed to development of their constituencies, then the common people can do nothing for at least five years. Taking advantage of exactly this constitutional reality, the people in power in Maharashtra have been messing up with urban development in most places. Nagpur offers a classic example of how Maharashtra’s Second Capital is saddled with a non-government. n