The grouse: mayor missing

BANGALORE: Time: 6 pm on Monday. The rain came down in sheets and water-logging level went up by inches. A horrified populace reached for the telephone and poured complaints into the BCC’s control room.
The BCC, quick to respond, sent out a team of senior officials to inspect the areas being ravaged.
Missing from the team, however, was mayor P.R. Ramesh — the First Citizen who had promised many things when elected.Like covering up open storm water drains and introducing a transport system over them.
Actually, our new mayor was attending a political felicitation in a warm and cushy corner of the city on Monday night.
Outside, the storm water drains gushed with muddy water, and young unlucky Kiran fell into one particularly treacherous one.
Of course, mayor Ramesh did enquire about the rains, and the drains, on Monday night itself. He made a series of phone calls from home. On Tuesday, after the fury had washed away, he paid a visit to the devastated areas.
“We have seen over half a dozen mayors, nobody has solved the problem of flooding in our area. Work was initiated on a drainage system in September 2002 but came to a halt in April 2003,’’ laments Asha Nair, a resident of KR Garden, an area near the Airport taken over by the BCC in 1995 and inundated by every rain in the recent past.
“The mayor is, in effect, wholly responsible for the city’s improvement. But the problem is that before the person can learn the job, he/she has to leave. Mayors should be given at least a two-and-half year tenure,’’ says an official from an NGO which works with the BCC.
If Bangalore wants to be up there with Singapore, then its mayors will have to stop being ornamental, and get down to work — in the drains and on the roads.