Re: Rants on Bangalore's traffic situation Warning : Massive rant to follow below encompassing common sense, science, spirituality etc.
While I'm relieved that the strike has finally been called off, I'm not in any mood to forgive those that have been responsible for it for the past 3 days, resulting in unbelievable traffic jams, more lawlessness than ever I have seen and absolute pits of stupidity.
Today it took me 80 minutes (yes 1 hour & 20 minutes) to travel a distance of 2.5 kms, mathematically this bring the average speed to a little under 2 kmph. This is officially walking speeds & I'm aware that for those working in the ORR even this is nothing.. that makes this local situation much sadder. That apart the past 2 days I've been reaching work in 1.5 hours (a whole 3 hours wasted just for travel), I was forced to drive as autos have gone nuts with the rates and Uber the less said the better with their secretive spike charges. Its not even the average speed that got to me but the sheer lack of traffic enforcement, many dozens of violations of 1-way rules, and absolute disregard for lane discipline. As long as one gets 10 feet in front he/she couldn't be lesser bothered about the irrelevant details like rules. Its been a nightmare for the past 2 days but today just about broke every record I've personally witnessed.
Public transport is called essential for a reason, many lakhs of people rely on it and since its been around forever, no one can fault the public for taking it for granted. I did not get a great education just to keep quiet for things that are so obviously irrational and downright evil. Where does it end? The city administrative authorities are digging up every road left right and centre, allowing public transport to be withdrawn by letting the situation degrade to a level which anyone could've seen coming from 10 miles, and on top of that they throw the "public" to the wolves, to fend for themselves. The American "multinational" corporations on the other hand expect this train-wreck of a local system to perform on par with their expectations and timings thus forcing everyone to travel as they hold the economy with a tight leas.. er noose. The result - today.
Political correctness comes at a great cost. One (including I myself) cannot criticize those that govern the nation as we shall constantly be reminded that there is no better alternative either, one cannot rant on a particular demographic of motorists since in no demographic are 100% of the people guilty of rule-breaking & one cannot even stand up for what's right as he/she will be quickly reminded of their brazen proactiveness as a negative attribute.
As I harp on about the current scene of things, many, if not all think that I have a persecution complex.. that its easier to just do stuff without thinking too hard or deeply into why things are the way they are. I take one look at what's happening - news channels/papers showing how the public suffers the water loggings, terrible infrastructure, traffic jams and endless pollution just to get eyeballs and sensationalism, the custodians of democracy and administration upholding neither, and the utterly brainwashed public, patiently withstanding all the deficiencies that the country throws at them.. after all we are taught that the big G is always right and always fair, no matter how ridiculous their actions may seem - and I feel there is indeed a system of persecution in place only to be ignored due to the futility of the alternative.
I'm proud to be paying tax, no matter how many of them are there (VAT, KKC, ST, SBT, etc), after all its part of what makes a democracy.. however the least I can expect in return is not to be let down in terms of essentials and equality of being. One can make as many excuses as possible for the current strike but who let it degenerate to this level where it had to come down to a protest for things to progress? I don't care which entity falls directly under the government or not, I don't care which departments are under the influence of local bodies and I don't care how many hundreds of years they will use the same 2 excuses to pretend that they're helpless, bottom line is that they collect the taxes in unison and should not use pathetic excuses to not do what they are supposed to do in the first place.
Check and mate, we still lose.
Last edited by dark.knight : 27th July 2016 at 23:14.
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