Chennai: potholed paradise

On New Year's eve, many of the Hyundai Accents received by Chennai Police gratis from the Korean carmaker were at their screaming best. They were zipping along in some places, their lights flashing and sirens wailing or standing with metallic efficiency at other locations (what they achieved is not clear, though).

In 2007, Chennai is no different from what it was a year ago, when there were no freebie Hyundais for "patrolling." After the Northeast Monsoon and with a faceless Mayor at Ripon Building (M. Subramaniam, heard of him?), the metro's roads are a long trail of potholes.

Apparently, the somnolent occupants of the Corporation headquarters have decided to allocate money for road repairs, but the Zonal Officers (Assistant Commissioners) are in no hurry to do basic repair work to fill up the potholes. So in most places, you simply bump along and pay the automobile mechanic more.

This sort of indifference contrasts with the hype generated by globizens about the way this hypermetro is making waves. There are colourful advertisements in newspapers claiming to offer "English" gardens with "Spanish" villas in their midst, tall glass and steel marvels housing BPOs who are linked to international capitals. You only have to spend a fiver on the Mass Rapid Transit System that travels the length of the Cooum and Buckhingham Canal, which are nothing but open sewers, to see what a travesty of truth Chennapatnam is!



The enormous amounts of waste generated by the villa types gets carted to shanties lining these canals, where some of it is segregated for onward sale for crude recycling. The rest is simply dumped on the riverside. The waste plastic and white board dumped summarily in this fashion provides some weak relief to the black sewage-marked banks of the watercourses, while the shanties appear in the background, rusty reminders that there is a city that is invisible to the chatterati and which the media has stopped talking about because it is no longer fashionable to do so.

New platform ticket vending machines at Chennai Central

At the best of times, Chennai Central is a beehive of activity, to some a functional anarchy of teeming thousands who throng a stately building that is familiar to generations. It takes little imagination to realise that the major part of the passenger handling areas of this premier railway terminal were created during colonial rule (just as the British put in more rail tracks to expand their own interests than free India's leaders have been able to, to pursue theirs).

Two new things strike you at Chennai Central.

There are a couple of sleek-looking platform ticket vending machines of foreign manufacture on the portico in the entrance. Neither is functional as yet, and I doubt if they will be around for long. It is of course, debatable whether you need German-built machines when you have many people who can find gainful employment (remember that machines need to be refilled with tickets and change, which requires people, though fewer than to operate separate counters).

Then there is a bright green kiosk on the bus bay outside Chennai Central now. This belongs to that somnolent bureaucracy, the Metropolitan Transport Corporation that runs the city bus service. The objective is to dispense daily, weekly and monthly season tickets. On a weekday afternoon, I came across this kiosk, nicely and cosily shut. I learn that the passes and tickets are only available in the first fortnight of the month. It is a pity that MTC cannot use modern technology and a matching attitude for its operations: Its buses are ramshackle and dangerously old, dirty, unwashed and polluting. Its crews are surly, rude, abusive and unabashedly homophobic. Its bureaucracy is faceless, arrogant even in its obscurity and closed to reform. Above all, it is unredeemingly corrupt.