Sir,

Apropos ‘Hotch-potch patch work to fill potholes’ (SOM dated Sept. 18), there is a saying in Urdu ‘Jaldi ka kaam, Shaitan ka kaam’  — roughly translated, it means ‘Work done in a haste, is Devil’s work’. Dasara works are done in the last hour year after year and crores are spent, as you rightly say to do some hotch-potch work.

Our monstrous roads not only kill but maim any number of unfortunate people almost everyday. When do we get the kind of roads that we see in the United States of America, Europe or for that matter the Gulf countries? When does this exercise of filling potholes and the same story every year end?

Dasara works is also a good chance for corrupt officials and ‘accommodative’ contractors, to make some quick moolah. Rarely, if at all, the authorities take pride in doing a good job. They don’t realise that they’re hurting their motherland by executing sub-standard works and they don’t realise that they will have their nemesis for being greedy and corrupt.

When I was working  in the Gulf, the staff in a bank used to wear a badge with these words: ‘Do it right, the first time’. We cannot over-emphasise how much important and relevant is this dictum in Indian context !

– Mubasher Mirza, Bannimantap ‘C ‘ Layout, 21.9.2018

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