While Mr Narendra Modi was dedicating the 118 Kms- 10 Lane Expressway connecting Bengaluru to Mysuruto enable the commuters to travel the said distance in less than 75 minutes, I was struggling behind the wheels to pass through the congested narrow roads by leading a tedious 14 -hours journey from Wayanad to Trivandrum, which is just a 454 Kilometers drive!
While driving past by Resort at Wayanad, I saw a glimpse of our superstar who escaped from the ash-cladded, smoke-clogged city of Kerala-Kochi, which is burning down its lungs due to the cancerous smoke coming out of the massive pile of hazardous waste materials disposed at Brahmapuram, by putting much fear on the hearts of residents of Kochi and shame on the faces of so-called, educated, literate, number-1 Kerala. Behind the wheels, while listening to the political reels of my Facebook, I found the pettiest proclamations of some political leaders shamelessly justifying the inactive governmental systems, with an urge to protect their supreme leader, who is brazenly silent about the sorry state of Kerala!
A giant gutter on the road had dragged me out of the thoughts about the dream-like drive I had through the streets of Tamilnadu a week before, and at the same time, I felt disappointed about the sorry State of Kerala while getting wasted on the dusty roads. In the same breath, I felt a bit jealous about the better infrastructure facilities possessed by our neighbouring states and cursed our rulers for putting us in this ridiculous state of affairs. I cursed the decision to live in this sorry State of Kerala and continued driving through dusty, narrow roads, dreaming of a better Kerala. A nation will get the ruler it deserves, but the next generation will also have to suffer for the mistake of the present ones. I quickly came out of my contemplations when overheard the ill-studied speech of the party’s chief, who shamelessly boasted about national highway-66, a 45-meter-four lane road; in contrast, the rest of the country is celebrating the inauguration of 10-lane national highways!!
I felt dejected about the shortsightedness of our visionaries, who are not even bothered to develop proper infrastructure, create clean and hygienic living conditions, install proper supervisory mechanisms to review the initiatives and thereby failed to attract more talent to the State by creating investment friendly atmosphere and finally resulting in a mass migration of the inhouse talents to other states and nations.
The sorry state of Kerala shall continue unless we recapitulate our policies, rework the political ideologies, do away with the system of distributing freebies and concentrate more on developing infrastructure. Until then, the Sorry state of Kerala shall continue, and it's your choice to suffer it.
Bijoy Pulipra