In Asia's biggest industrial-cum-residential area, New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, popularly known as NOIDA, there is a new war underway. The war to make Noida a symbol of "Vikas".
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath both are descending into the town to inaugurate the Noida-Greater Noida metro link.
Already, it has become a bone of contention, with claims that it was already inaugurated, as this tweet of former UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav seems to suggest.
राम नाम जपना, पराया काम अपना ।https://t.co/sIVxqlttiw— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) December 23, 2017
But as a citizen of Noida, who often goes through the harassment of living in any township bursting at its seams may be confronted with, these are the scenes that upset me the most.
What's the possibility of you ever seeing "road cleaners, rubble removers and bridge painters" on a Sunday afternoon, working feverishly? Through the year, you will never see so many people tirelessly working to make a flyover look spic and span.
(Mind you, in course of our election coverage in Gujarat, we did see how Surat City has been turned into India's cleanest city number 1 only and only because civic administration there took it upon itself to actually change the face of the city. Not just some temporary 'jugaad').
That's why this Christmas eve, when Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath comes to town, he would be well advised to go beyond the route which has been fixed for him by the babus in town.
“Vikas” can never be "24 hour shelf life issue". It needs to be beyond this temporary face lifting of a city if it has to go beyond a mere jugaad.
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