BJP govt in Karnataka: Why cloak infrastructure deals in secrecy?

The frequent turmoil and hurdles encountered by the present government have resulted in a weak link in development with respect to infrastructure and its growth.

In fact, infrastructure growth has almost come to a standstill with respect to roads, traffic and transportation and basic amenities like uninterrupted power supply and water.

People are frustrated with the government. The reasons are many: the pathetic condition of roads, particularly during rains; the pavement structure; the absence of safe pedestrian walkways — most of which have been occupied by hawkers and vendors; the congestion; the delays; the accident prone thoroughfares whose perilous nature is confirmed by poor road safety index and the high air and water pollution due to unending work on Namma Metro and other infrastructure facilities.

Though crores of rupees have been sunk into various infrastructure projects, it did not deliver any qualitative improvement in the life of ordinary citizens, raising doubts on whether these funds have been spent for the right cause at the right time. Though the projects would have been planned well and started on time, the delay in their progress has resulted in total dissatisfaction.

Besides, laws governing projects like Metro rail and grade separators are not transparent. Since these projects are being executed with public money, people have the right to know the expenditure and the way they are executed. But many mega projects are draped in non-transparent laws to benefit the operator.

In a democratic set-up, this careless attitude of the government and its agencies is appaling. These works are essentially to be audited, assessed and accounted for quality and functioning as they belong the general public and use largely public money.

On the contrary, there is a tremendous leap in the quality of services provided by a few organisations like the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation which has added new buses, constructed TTMCs and offered novel services like Big 10 and Metro feeders.

Ultimately, citizens want transparency in the functioning of the government as huge investments are made through public funding. For example, most documents pertaining to Namma Metro construction are kept in a secret box making it look like a defence deal.The poor quality of construction, design flaws and operations need to be discussed in the public domain. But this is done more as an exception than a rule. There is a need for proactive consultation from local experts.

There is no need to keep things confidential and they should be made accessible under the Transparency Act. The attitude of officials involved must also be scrutinised. This refers to all corporations and other government undertakings as well.

Absence of this only leads to frustration and as a consequence, the image of the government is definitely lowered. In my opinion, considering the above aspects, my rating for the government is 4 out of 10.