Water-logging Exposes Government's Failure
Patna: April 17, 2008
 After sleeping at the wheels for nearly two and a half years since assuming power in the state, the Nitish government is only now issuing tender to clean up Patna's drainage system that it expects to somehow complete by April 30, less than 12 days from now.
The state Urban Development department joint secretary Prem Chandra Chowdhary, at a press conference in Patna on Thursday claimed that the 'people of Patna would not experience water-logging this monsoon as the Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) has floated tender for the clean up of Patna underground drainage', an insinuation that no one in sane mind is buying unless the contractors come from the planet Krypton.
Blaming the National Building and Construction Corporation (NBCC) for poor workmanship and ignoring the government's ineptness in outsourcing the work to NBCC in the first place, Chowdhary said the drainage built by the NBCC were being demolished and then rebuilt from scratch 'to rid the state capital from the water-logging' problem.
 Meanwhile, a little over half an hour of torrential rain with gusty wind and hailstorm on Thursday, Patna's street became a pathetic testament of the Nitish government's failure in 'changing the face of Patna' as promised by the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar himself and his lieutenant and former Urban Development Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey soon after wrestling power from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) two and a half years ago.
With ankle-deep water in many areas including Dariapur, Machhua Toli, Exhibition Road, Rajendra Nagar, Saidpur, Mithapur, Chandmari Road, and Kankarbagh, the people of Patna got a glimpse of what was in the stock this monsoon season and the scene was not pretty, in fact downright ugly!
Chowdhary, however, admitted that the Urban Development department failed to utilize funds and implement schemes that it had already on the table.
"In the year 2007-08, the department could only spend Rs. 388 crore out of a budget of Rs. 692 crore," Chowdhary said relying heavily on acronyms like DPR and NURM while also blaming the Central government for some of the state's Urban Development woes.
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