[Reader-list] Bombay Pune Expressway

[Shammi Nanda]

Expressway:
The expressway between Pune and Bombay bypasses all
the villages. It is fenced on both sides to prevent
villagers and animals from crossing it. If some ones
owns land on both sides of the highway they have to
walk miles to go to an overbridge to cross over to the
other part of their land. Never have we felt
restriction on our freedom to cross a highway in an
open landscape. It doesn’t allow cycles, two wheelers
and  bullock carts. There are no Dhabas where the
truck drivers can bathe,  eat and sleep.  It is a
desert landscape. No puncture repair shops, no trickle
down benefits of employment for the villagers near the
highway. We have a  road which denies the existence of
villagers around it. It doesn’t even acknowledge them.

It is so deserted that now we have highway robberies.
The police and newspapers have no shame in saying that
it’s tribals. They come out with theories that the
industries have  closed down in that area leaving the
tribals unemployed but nonetheless it’s tribals who
are the highway robbers. It is worse than  when the
newspapers write the native place of the servant who
commits a crime in delhi, a Nepali or a Bihari boy.
Here they haven’t  even arrested any tribal for the
crime. Why don’t they ever say that a Gujrati stock
broker was involved in the stock market scam? 
The police comes with it’s Do’s and Donts. Don’t stop
at the highway even if some one waves you to stop. The
other day a managing director of a private company was
robbed, poor guy kept waving at the cars passing by
but no one stopped. 
It doesn’t even have any service lanes. It’s sad we
just copy the model of a highway from US or Europe.
How can we have a highway without Dhabas? Are these
the future roads of India? Where are the truck drivers
supposed to rest? Who are we to put restrictions on
the movements of the villagers? I am sure the lives of
the people must have been affected by the highway but
no one bothers. 

Man with a mobile phone:
The other day I saw someone walking with bucket of
water in one hand while talking on a mobile phone. He
was going to shit on the road. In Bombay you can
afford a mobile but you can’t get a decent place to
shit. 


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