I was in cochin, kerala a few days back and I must say I was really looking forward to it. It had been a while since I had been home and I was waiting to go see my family. When I reached cochin I was shocked at how little the place has changed. Some might say that it’s a good thing but sadly I don’t think a single person in cochin will agree with me.
The roads:
The roads in kerala were never known to be the best in the country but none the less the roads were decent and motor able. The national highway 47 after they widened it was the pride and joy of the people. The roads were wide and pothole free. Now sadly 15 years since the roads have remained the same width, you have signals that either work and cause a traffic jam, or fail and cause a traffic jam. The number of cars, bikes and the horrible buses have increased 3-4 fold and this means there is always traffic on the road. There are ‘U’ turns provided at every point a house/shop owner paid the PWD so the divider is pointless. And the latest safety device that they have introduced near there turns is something of a gate that blocks one lane of traffic so that the whole national highway is brought down to single file at intervals. And of course the cops have sold advertising space on these gates, and this is largely jewellery or saree shops. And all this is the national highway. The city roads have not become any wider in my memory and they are as horrible as ever with each street getting narrower and more and more unruly buses on the road.
The Airport
The old cochin airport was just one notch above being a glorified shack. And the new airport when it started was a path-breaker of sorts in India. It was one of the first public private partnership airports in the country. Kerala seemed to be headed in the right direction. It was a greenfield airport outside the heart of the city and all these were strange concepts in those days. The infrastructure of the airport was state-of-art for the time but has remained the same. Confusion and chaos regin supreame as passengers and clueless ground and airport staff try and cram the correct people into the correct planes. The security personnel don’t know a single word of Malayalam or English and a large majority of passengers don’t know to speak hindi. This results in a situation where you end up standing in the security area for 10-20 mins.
Infrastructure
The infrastructure of the city and the state is in shambles, a 1 km flyover will take a minimum of 5 years to build. The biggest single problem in the state is the labour unions. It’s a curse on the state that needs to be wiped out. It’s unfortunate to see that the youth wings of these unions are still strong and against progress.
Whilst the whole country moved forward kerala remained still, while the country continues to move forward, kerala unfortunately seems to be moving backward. I don’t think I will be wrong in saying that the state is worse of today than what it was 5 years ago. Looking forward to a change soon. Elections are coming up in a few months. Please vote for progress and not for protests/strikes and bandhs.
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