Hon’ble Chief Minister Sir , Thiru M K Stalin,
Sir, You are newly elected ! You are still flushed from the victory you scored in the State Elections earlier this month! I am sure you are going to be feeling you’re on cloud 9 for a bit while more.
While your euphoria lasts, Sir, please do take the opportunity to make bold, brave and creative departures from the run-of-the-mill tasks and chores of your office, governance and administration. Please try out some out-of-the-box ideas and try to bring a whole new fresh approach to how you wish to be remembered 5 years from now as a Chief Minister.
Your political track-record in Tamil Nadu you have often claimed truly shines … and why? … because of the good work you did as one-time Mayor of Chennai and as erstwhile Minister of Public Works . You are never tired of claiming that you did much to improve and modernise the civil infrastructure of both Chennai City (to make it “singaara chennai”) as well that of the entire state to put Tamil Nadu on the top ranks of states in the country with good-quality public civil infrastructure — like roads, bridges, fly-overs, drainage-systems, dams, reservoirs etc.
But Sir, that was all more than 10 long years ago … You cannot expect we ordinary citizens to laud you for your past achievements or laurels. But then Sir we the citizens are happy to give you again a great opportunity now in the next 5 years to prove that your past track record as the “infrastructure man” of Tamil Nadu will continue to blaze forth into the future too.
No one in the State — at least certainly no ordinary citizen like me — has any clue today as to what really is the state and condition of the many civil infrastructure and assets that Tamil Nadu owns and maintains. There is no visibility … no updated public dashboard, no info-graphs, no easy-to-read report other than what gets provided in dense and foggy Annual State Budget presentations— for the general public today to see how efficiently the Government PWD (Public Works Dept) has been all these years or decades in creating, maintaining and modernising the civil infrastructure of the State.
Why? Because there just isn’t any simple and meaningful quantitative measure or index by which one can assess the true condition of public civil-construction assets of the State.
For example, Sir, does anyone know the average age of bridges, flyovers, drainage in all the Class A and B cities of Tamil Nadu ?
Would you be able to get your PWD Dept. to submit to you a comprehensive White Paper on the present ageing status of all major State civil -infrastructure… in exactly the simple manner in which, say, the attached info-graphic above describes clearly the present age of the old and creaking infrastructure of the USA ?
Sir, I for one, as an ordinary citizen who pays his taxes regularly to the government , and who knows it’s from that pool of money collected as tax that all the PWD work got actually accomplished to build roads and bridges and drainage etc. … Sir, do I not have a right to know how long ago they were all constructed and what exactly is their condition today ?
Take a look for a moment at the above chart.
It shows that the USA —- the wealthiest country in the world — has public-works assets whose average is now 50 years ! In other words America’s public civil-structures are half-a-century old … i.e. today’s GenX and GenZ generations of America are using the same roads, bridges and overpasses which their grandfathers had built for themselves two generations ago ! That’s how old and dilapidated America’s public civil-construction assets are today !
If your IAS officers in your government today were to provide you with a simple graphic much like the above to reveal to you the comparable ageing of all Tamil Nadu’s “bricks-and-mortar” assets, I as an ordinary citizen of the State that you now will be governing in the ensuing 5 years, I do really wonder how it might look like!
Sir, even if you as Chief Minister, have no time to engage like me in such idle wondering, I ask you in all earnestness, wouldn’t you be curious at least to know what is the age of the iconic Gemini Flyover in Chennai City that was built during the time of your late, departed father who was Chief Minister too then?
Chief Minister Sir, let me remind you that the Gemini Flyover’s age today is the same as the average age of civil infrastructure in all of America! Fifty long years … half a century almost!
Now, as a Tamilian I don’t think of that as a matter to be proud of in any way…
Sir, do you? Will you be proud… after 5 years?
Yours Truly,
Sudarshan Madabushi