Putting ribbons before residents

Illustration/Uday Mohite

I'm pretty sure the Mayor of Bombay is a nice man. Millions of us may not know exactly what a Mayor does in 2018, because we are busy doing real jobs that require actual work, but that's our problem.

He is probably busy saving lives without our knowledge, because that may be why we have always needed a Mayor, even if the job description continues to be a bit of a mystery. What does bother me is why the Mayor's presence is required before something built for Bombayites, using our own taxes, can be thrown open to us.

Apparently, a section of the 145-year-old Cooperage Bandstand was shut down for renovation in January 2017. 21 months and R50 lakh later - because everyone knows how the BMC functions at the speed of light - that particular section is finally ready to be used again. Renovation was supposedly completed a month ago, after which the very nice Mayor was invited to formally inaugurate it. He hasn't responded though, presumably because he has been occupied with his other important duties that involve the formal inauguration of other projects. And so, because the very nice Mayor is busy, locals will simply have to wait. The facilities they are legally entitled to will be withheld for just a little while longer.

I can't blame the Mayor. It's not his fault that his presence is required before something can be thrown open. It's weird that, in 2018, while the rest of the world marches on and looks to the future, India continues to rewind the clock. We are more obsessed with what happened a few thousand years ago than we are about the fact that our lives today are miserable for no fault of our own. We place politicians on pedestals, garland them instead of question them, and insist on them cutting ribbons before we are allowed to use anything that is rightfully ours in the first place.

The Mayor was reportedly unavailable a month ago too, when the MTNL flyover in Goregaon was to be inaugurated. The flyover in question had taken years to be built, for reasons known to the government of Maharashtra alone, but travellers could only stare at the finished project wistfully, because an inauguration was necessary.

To be fair, if it weren't for inaugurations, our politicians would have only televised debates, Bharat bandhs and the stoking of communal tensions to occupy their time. An inauguration massages their egos, allowing them to believe the myth that they are important people who matter, which is why they take them so seriously. The fact that we allow this to happen time and again is a sad reflection on our part though, because it shows that we think of politicians as our rulers rather than our representatives.

Before the flyover was a swimming pool in Chembur, which was supposed to be opened and wasn't because two political parties couldn't agree on who was supposed to do the inauguration. Eventually, it was thrown open without an inauguration. In April this year, two flyovers and a subway on the Thane-Belapur Road - constructed at a reported cost of Rs 155 crore - were completed but their opening was delayed because the MMRDA couldn't comment on when the inauguration would be done. A chief guest was hard to find. That particular road was being used by 1 lakh vehicles every day. None of those lakhs of people mattered as much as a politician's presence though.

In May 2016, a garden under the Tulpule flyover on Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Road was completed after two years but compelled to remain closed because of a dispute between local corporators who wanted to take credit for the project. In August 2015, following another tug-of-war between two political parties about who should inaugurate a flyover in Jogeshwari, a group of citizens inaugurated it themselves. The BMC didn't seem to understand this though, telling reporters that the flyover hadn't been officially inaugurated yet.

Politicians want us to believe that projects are built using funds that they provide, conveniently ignoring the fact that it is our taxes that make them possible. They continue to function at their whims and fancies because the rest of us look the other way. They continue to hold us to ransom because we allow them to, and because they know we will wait patiently in the sun and rain while one of them cuts a ribbon. The Mayor is probably a very nice man. I wish he had a real job to do though.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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