Collapses...

A long hiatus.....collapse of enthu after the inital excitement...too many things to ponder about...
But two collapses worth talking about...to think where we are headed as a nation...
Sections of the Delhi metro collapsed a few weeks ago, killing several people. The head of the organization, a celebrated engineer, resigned taking moral responsibility.....but the political bosses said no. They do not know anyhting about responsibility leave alone moral responsiblity. And they need him..after all the metro has to be ready for the Commonwealth games next year...and they dont stand a chance without him. Now they have found the reasons for the collapse...faulty design and material. There is nothing new about this...happens all the time...only now it is in the capital and in a prestigious project. If it had happened in some town killing a few people we would not have even heard of it. The construction company has a good track record, but they are to be blacklisted and the consulting engineers are to be banned for something like 5 years. As usual this may be an eyewash...things may continue like before.

It rained for 2 hours in Delhi. Traffic jams are common...I was once stuck in one for 4 hours..it took an hour and a half to get out of the airport. But this time the airport was flooded...news channels beamed pictures of water logging inside the airport and water was leaking from the lamps in the false ceiling...it is not some old airport...it is a brand new one - the pride of Delhi. Of course one of the reasons bandied about was the overflow of sewers...but this is not new. Sewers always overflow..we are still to master the art of making sewers and interconnecting them so that they flow..the Harrapans possibly knew how.
In this endless blame game we tend to forget that this points to a deeper malaise..well recognized and acknowledged...we dont have the quality of people to execute and finish projects properly. One cannot expect people with no training and skills employed by sub-c0ntractors to deliver quality. It is a cancer which has eaten into the sytem for so long that there is no remedy. We have promoted and accepted mediocrity for so long that it is impossible to set the system right. The more infrastructure we build the more it is bound to collapse...