http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?284015
The Take It Too Easy Polity
With prices of utilities climbing apace and delivery short and inefficient, the great Indian hoodwink continues
Nine years on, alas, it is not just the poor and forgotten millions in rural India who are waiting for long-promised basic amenities like clean potable water, electricity, public transportation, working sewerage systems, good roads, neighbourhood schools, gas connections and supplies. No, all this sounds like a fantastic dream for most people outside privileged gated communities. Life in the teeming cities, especially in urban slums, poor and middle-class localities, is getting tougher—bordering on the unbearable.
And this is not a Delhi or Mumbai phenomenon alone—the state of affairs in most cities is no less alarming. Over the past year, consumers in cities in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra among other states staged protests against hikes in power tariffs. Supported by political parties, Hyderabad’s consumers recently took to the streets against a fuel surcharge adjustment that has almost doubled the power bill for many. Consumers in West Bengal have been up in arms over insufficient delivery of LPG cylinders. There have been mini riots over the build-up of roadside garbage in Kerala’s cities. And so on.
The failure of Governance somehow is going to catch up with SCUM of the earth some day. How long can these creeps create sickular bogey and keep hoodwinking majority of the people will be key to their success?For someone like Lata, a housemaid, the answer is unclouded: she will not vote for the ruling Congress government in Delhi as she is angry at its failure to provide piped water in her colony. Every month she, like others in her neighbourhood, has to individually pay the private contractor in Sangam Vihar, a colony in south Delhi, Rs 500-1,500 for supplying borewell water once a week. Lata considers herself one of the lucky ones; many Delhi colonies don’t get water supply even once a fortnight.
