11th May 2008. Heaps of mud, broken dividers with mud all over, main road dug up, traffic badly hit and people anxiously waiting to see things change. This was the intersection of J P Nagar's 15th Cross Ring Road, a critical artery in south Bangalore, and the 24th Main Road, and the scene of a magic underpass construction.

The notice board put up by Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) mentioned that the construction will finish by February 2009.

Eight months later, the scene looks exactly the same.

15th cross-ring road intersection dug up (Pic: Supriya Khandekar)

The magic seems to have faded even before the underpass comes into existence. People are still facing exactly the same problems. Traffic is still getting affected. 15th Cross-Ring Road remains blocked and vehicles have to take a longer detour to reach the other side of J P Nagar. The only thing that looks resolved is the matter of land acquisition: no land is to be taken from the residents.

On the morning of my visit, it looked like no work was happening. There was no engineer on site at around 11 AM. The workers in the bulldozers and rollers were taking a nap.

Vehicles are forced to jump over the broken dividers to come to the other side of the road and this, not by will. Traffic constables standing on the spot are directing all the vehicles to go over the divider. The two traffic constables who are standing at 15th Cross are also clueless about the project and say, “We are on this special duty because there were lots of traffic jams and people could not commute easily.”

A couple of months back, B. N. Vijaykumar, MLA (BJP), Jayanagar constituency, visited this site after a resident complained about the inconvenience caused by the never ending project. Vijaykumar was shocked and said, “The underpass was supposed to have been 80 percent complete by now according to the plan, but on the site it was not even 20 per cent done.”

Supriya Khandekar is a staff journalist at Citizen Matters

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