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Originally Posted by theredliner Since it is a flyover for entrance into a private property, it shouldn't even be CSR IMO. It is the expenditure for its own infrastructure by a private company.
More importantly, how can the govt. allow private property entrances to be built on public land? That too on the most important road of the city after digging the sections which were white topped a few months back after spending tens of crores (for this stretch). |
The entrance to the property was what they had built earlier. The plan was approved and as per the law of the land they are ok. This new entrance is not a need or requirement for the developer.
Now the public is suffering and there is a big issue (because of the approved plan for the entrance). The government and the authorities are struggling to solve the issue; but they are not ready to spend on making a flyover there. Now the developer is willing to spend and make people's life a little easier. This is hence a CSR activity.
A corporate lesson that I've learnt is that it is more important how you present/project anything than what you present.
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Originally Posted by poloman I am seeing a lot of criticism for white topping of the roads in this thread. Can anyone specify why this is considered a sham or a white elephant? To me, this was a good move. The longevity is really good for these roads especially in wet conditions and roads exposed to heavy loads and flooding. This will also put to a retarring scam at least for a reasonable period.
I am looking for some serious technical concerns other than the usual ones propagated by armchair activists like corruption, lack of water drain mechanism etc. As if these issues were non-existent before. |
Corruption was existing before and this has taken it to a new level (ok let's ignore that)
Lack of water drain is not just propaganda, it's a real thing. The storm water drains are already small (by poor design and by encroachments) and can't take this additional inflow leading to flooding. Let's keep that aside too for a while.
Technical reasons why I am against this white topping:
1. Tarred roads allow water to seep through to the ground and it helps refill ground water levels. The concrete that is used for this white topping doesn't allow that. All the rain water goes down the drains and wasted. Depleting ground water levels are a hard hitting reality in Bangalore (ask any body who got borewells drilled and how deeper and deeper they're forced to go with each passing year).
2. Because of reason 1., old roadside trees which Bangalore was once famous for are dying a slow death because they aren't getting enough water. that is if they are already not cut down. this definitely is taking the temperatures of the city higher
3. Many of these new white-topped roads already have already turned smooth and pose a high risk of vehicle skidding(especially 2-wheelers). They may last long in terms of not getting potholes, but they don't last long with respect to surface roughness.
4. If re-tarring was a scam as per you, re-scaling (lines to keep the surface rough will replace that). I'd prefer the former because re-scaling or repairing dug up sections of White topping is tougher and more expensive that re-tarring (digging up new roads isn't stopping anytime soon).
5. Tyre life of our cars reduce drastically with concrete roads...the cascading effect because of this is also a real issue.
6. The roads selected for white topping are already good wide roads with hardly any issues (like in and around Lalbagh, KR road). The roads which were bad earlier, remain bad. Priority is something that our city planners don't know.