With my present responsibility as BD & OE at Corporate office, and more specifically with JFE activities, I do require visiting most of JSW plants with JFE officials or otherwise. Recent one was a road trip to Tarapur works with Sugino San. As norms, I picked him from Four Seasons and our car speedup for Tarapur. Weather was beautiful, with occasional rains every 15 minutes, was adding colors to the weather. Drive till Dahisar was very comfortable. Suddenly Car started taking brakes, and the average speed broke down from 80 km/h to 20-30 km/h. I realized that flyover was in making, keeping a narrow pathway for vehicles to pass. I was deep in my thoughts, so didn’t paid attention to the slow speed. After 30 min. of slow driving I realized that something is wrong. I focused my attention on the road and the heavy traffic ahead of our car. I commanded driver to break rule and drive car from opposite lane. Since the problem was severe and a big haphazard line of vehicles were on road, the inquisitive mind tried to find a reason of the same. I started focusing on every intricate detail I could collect in mind. I could realize that there were more than 10 flyovers developed by NHAI and IRB between Dahisar and Tarapur.
Two genuine questions came into mind.
Why 10 flyovers at a time, that too on the main road connecting Tarapur and Ratnagiri District from Mumbai?
Government may give the plea that the MIDC area of Tarapur needs to be connected to Mumbai for mutual benefit. Government may have a good intention of minimizing the distance between Mumbai to Tarapur by a whopping 80 minutes, from present 180 minutes, but the question remains why initiating all 10-12 projects at the same time? Why they dig roads at various places? Why the project was not taken one after other? Why people were were left traumatized for hours?
When NHAI is capable of making roads, bridges and Flyovers on difficult tracks, why it has partnered with IRB for this National Highway development project?
The good thinking could be a win-win merger to ensure the best of both companies come forward and deliver the best result in record time. But the speed of work and intentions says the opposite. Road and Flyovers are not complete, and IRB is collecting millions of rupees as Toll. I see the profit interest of business minded IRB and hunger for money by Government employed NHAI engineers. If all are there to loot, who will really take the pain of common man?
The other interesting thing observed on the roadside was Beer and Wine shops common along the road sides, in villages. Government can give their plea that it is for the discretion of common man to drink or not, but the fact of the matter is a poor person waters its money for liquor. The hard earned money could have been used at home, on wife, kids and family – is going into the hands of Mallya and other Liquor Barons. The question again came to my mind: why licenses were distributed to open wine shops in Public and eat poor’s hard earned money?
Suddenly my car stopped at one gateway. It was toll tax gateway. Driver paid Rs 50 and got permission ‘slip’ for continued driving. After some time another toll bridge and the cost were little higher Rs 70! So my curious mind did a simple calculation:
Toll Tax collected by IRB (at 2 places): Rs 50 and Rs 70 i.e. Rs 120 per vehicle.
Assuming 10,000 vehicles in 24 hours, per day (i.e., 7 vehicles in 1 min.) the collection is Rs 12,00,000 per day.
In 365 days, IRB collects Rs 43,80,00,000. i.e. approx 44 crores of Indian rupees per year. If the flyovers take 4 years of completion, common man would have paid Rs 1,75,20,00,000 i.e., 175 crores. A common man pays such a huge amount collectively, and still drives on a painful 60 - 80 Km road.
Another inquisitive question cropped up. If a common man pays 17 crores for one flyover, what amount government pays for infrastructure development? Normally toll taxes are taken for maintenance of roads / bridges / flyovers etc, if it is make with public-private partnership. It is not taken before the construction is complete and open for public use.
Government also invests common man’s money (paid in terms as various taxes) for infrastructure developments. It doesn’t own any money. If that is the case, what is the actual amount a common man pays to live a filthy life for four years!
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