City needs solutions to potholes without rigmarole

The jerk caused the tyre to burst, broke the ring of the tyre and hit the bike behind it. The bike fell and the toddler, who was with the rider and another passenger, died

Potholes are in the news again. This paper has run a slew of reports about the lethal craters on our roads. Some are sunshine accounts about citizens pitching in to fill them, while the others are painful, like the report about a two-year-old boy who lost his life after an accident wherein the bike he was on toppled after a truck went over a deep pothole. The jerk caused the tyre to burst, broke the ring of the tyre and hit the bike behind it. The bike fell and the toddler, who was with the rider and another passenger, died.

The familiar passing of the buck has already started in this case and the civic bodies response of claiming to be waiting for a dry spell to fill potholes has been heard so often that it is laughable. It is time to dedicate these months to ensure that potholes do not appear at all, so that it is not necessary to 'fill' them. As the rain seems to be petering out, can we look forward to a 'pothole-free' monsoon next year? Or, are we just supposed to take this in our stride? Do our local leaders expect us to go through the most challenging season in the city's calendar with an attitude like 'these things come with the territory when it rains'?

Take a non-negotiable approach to the pothole problem. Our civic chiefs have to work with a vision that the potholes should not be on our roads at all. Currently, we are working on the premise that potholes exist, the road falls apart and we will repair it. For that, we need a dry spell, and then decide which agency that stretch of road falls under. This is a ludicrous and very soft approach as we are doomed to a pattern before finally get down to repairing the potholes. Great will is needed to tackle a vexing and nightmarish problem. We need a solution, not the perennial rigmarole.

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