Thursday, September 13, 2007

Road Dividers

Road dividers are the simplest device to keep local party workers busy with petty contracts. They have very little to do with traffic management and have lot to contribute to global warming. Look at any city in India you'll find road dividers and pavements are constantly on the dig and newer ones in place, just to be replaced when the next budget comes in. Some years ago, the city of Bangalore had excellent granite slabbed pavements and in the last decade alone several of its main streets have been redone with tiles, concrete slabs, tiles,concrete slab sequence that makes an interesting chronicle.
Not only do these road dividers call for greater vehicle-kilometers as often U-turns are one for a mile or more, they destroy in each round of relaying whatever trees or plants that are grown. They also are one of the greatest contributors to road accidents - matching the blue-line buses! In several small towns the cows act as road dividers and it has mutual benefits - the cows get the vehicles to wade off the fleas and the traffic behaves because there is some live creature there and that too revered!
I would vote for them, but the petty politicians and their backers will cry foul as it is their cash cow!

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