Did Singapore open CM’s eyes?

Did Singapore open CM’s eyes?
By Ramakrishna Upadhya
Deccan Herald

It was good to see H D Kumaraswamy undertaking his first foreign tours after becoming chief minister to Dubai and Singapore, the two most successful city-states in the East, at a time when infrastructure development has become the key mantra to improve the living conditions and attract more investment. We need not crib about our netas and babus spending tax-payers’ money on foreign jaunts, as long as they come back with rich experience and implement here some of the best practices they would have seen abroad.

Singapore is roughly the size of Bangalore and Dubai is even smaller, but the kind of development they have seen in the last few decades is mind-boggling. Any first-time visitor would be stunned by the neatness and cleanliness everywhere, the row of gigantic skyscrapers, the orderly movement of traffic on impressively laid out roads and the business-like manner in which the people conduct themselves.

There is a large population of Indians in both city-states contributing substantially to the growth of the respective economies and enjoying the fruits of their labour with the local populace. Dubai is strictly controlled by the ruling monarchy, but in Singapore, the Indians do play an important role even in government, the most prominent being the president of the country, who is of Indian origin. Unlike former Chief Minister S M Krishna, who promised to make Bangalore into a Singapore, but did not even get the filth removed from KR Market in the five years he was in office, we don’t expect Kumaraswamy to make tall promises. After all, Indians in India are seemingly a different species from those who go abroad – an inexplicable phenomenon which the psychologists would do well to do an in-depth study. Kumaraswamy could make a beginning with a conscious effort to improve the quality of roads and drainages in Bangalore and other important cities. He would have seen in Dubai and Singapore that the roads there would make Hema Malini feel shy (Remember, Laloo Prasad Yadav had once promised to make the roads in Bihar to rival Hema Malini's cheeks? Phew!), but in Namma Bengaluru, the roads seem to resemble the surface of the moon with all its huge craters.

The politicians and bureaucrats here have always looked upon relaying and asphalting of roads or the construction of new roads as a fat cow which can be milked endlessly for illegal sources of income. Though crores of rupees are spent periodically on road maintenance and construction, the quality of work is generally so poor that they continually have to be relaid. It is perhaps the biggest money-spinning industry, after the transfer of government officials, for those in power.

Though everyone was aware of the endemic corruption in road works, the magnitude and the sources of such enormous swindling of public money have been brought to light by the Capt Raja Rao committee appointed by the High Court. The experts’ committee has submitted four reports so far (the last one was in May), giving shocking details of how road works have been systematically used by politicians and officials to drain away public funds.

Among the interesting observations the committee makes are that the BMP has not devised any scientific and technical parameters for the type and thickness of bitumen to be used for different roads, that BCC uses many unqualified contractors, that there is no proper system of quality control, that there is no transparent method of tendering the works, that the officials found to be colluding with the contractors in turning out a shoddy job, mostly go unpunished. Though the committee has made many valuable suggestions, the honourable BMP Council hasn’t yet found time to discuss them, let alone implementing them. After being goaded by the High Court, the former BMP Commissioner, Mr Jyoti Ramalingam filed an affidavit in the court saying “the recommendation for initiating action against the defaulting contractors and officials would be examined and action taken on a case-by-case basis.”

It is common knowledge that corporators, legislators and ministers are hand in glove with the officials in the whole scam and Mr Ramalingam's placatory noise is like asking one arm of the government to punish the other. If after his Dubai and Singapore experiences, Chief Minister Kumaraswamy wishes to bring about any changes, he will have to completely break the vicious circle and make a new beginning of awarding contracts to competent, reputed companies through transparent bidding, creation of special purpose vehicles for major projects and so on. At least then, we might be able to see some roads comparable to those in Singapore or Dubai.