out-sourcing the answer
In mid-July this year, I occasioned to visit the City Civil Courts Complex, near Cauvery Bhavan, and I sent out a letter to the press as below. I had to make another visit yesterday. Things there are only worse. Last week, I read in the papers that all contracts and procurements in various government departments in Karnataka are set to go digital in two years on a unified on-line e-procurement platform, provided by HP. Nothing can be better than that. So, what is holding up out-sourcing the maintenance of such complexes to professional agencies, I wonder.
Recently, I occasioned to visit the City Civil Courts Complex, near the Cauvery Bhavan, in the heart of the city. The complex is just about a couple of years old, with a lot of the construction work still in progress.
With the rapid strides in building technology, one would have expected at least the basics in the buildings in place, in such an important public building complex. Sadly, however, there is very little that is right about them. And, as far as the architecture is concerned, it is clearly the epitome of the PWD culture-a total and tragic eye-sore. Comparatively, even the over two-decade old Cauvery Bhavan complex looks fairly modern.
If the architecture and construction quality is bad, the maintenance is even worse. Even as early as 11 in the morning, the toilets are stinking to high heavens, leading to the litigants preferring the use of the compound walls in the less crowded spots in the locality to ease themselves against. The walls along the stair-ways are streaked all along with ‘paan’ stains. The lifts - just two of them for such a large complex – are supposedly meant for the exclusive use of the judges and lawyers. So much so, I noticed an invalid litigant going all the way up the steps using his crutches. And, if his case was posted in a court on the 4th floor, like mine was, God alone can help him.
The questions that arise are
a) How can we take pride in the institutions that form the basic pillars of our democracy when they are housed in such horrendous complexes?
b) Shouldn’t organizations like the Urban Arts Commission, etc, protect the citizens from the effects of the visual pollution that these complexes constitute?
c) In effect, shouldn’t the whole body that is the PWD be totally wound up, and such jobs completely out-sourced?
Recently, I occasioned to visit the City Civil Courts Complex, near the Cauvery Bhavan, in the heart of the city. The complex is just about a couple of years old, with a lot of the construction work still in progress.
With the rapid strides in building technology, one would have expected at least the basics in the buildings in place, in such an important public building complex. Sadly, however, there is very little that is right about them. And, as far as the architecture is concerned, it is clearly the epitome of the PWD culture-a total and tragic eye-sore. Comparatively, even the over two-decade old Cauvery Bhavan complex looks fairly modern.
If the architecture and construction quality is bad, the maintenance is even worse. Even as early as 11 in the morning, the toilets are stinking to high heavens, leading to the litigants preferring the use of the compound walls in the less crowded spots in the locality to ease themselves against. The walls along the stair-ways are streaked all along with ‘paan’ stains. The lifts - just two of them for such a large complex – are supposedly meant for the exclusive use of the judges and lawyers. So much so, I noticed an invalid litigant going all the way up the steps using his crutches. And, if his case was posted in a court on the 4th floor, like mine was, God alone can help him.
The questions that arise are
a) How can we take pride in the institutions that form the basic pillars of our democracy when they are housed in such horrendous complexes?
b) Shouldn’t organizations like the Urban Arts Commission, etc, protect the citizens from the effects of the visual pollution that these complexes constitute?
c) In effect, shouldn’t the whole body that is the PWD be totally wound up, and such jobs completely out-sourced?
posted by Muralidhar Rao at
3:06 AM
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