The Aam Aadmi’s Khaas Life in a Metro

@KeepUpWithKaustubh

The road not taken in HR corridors

They say that if you want the rainbow, then you have to put up with the rain! Unfortunately, most Mumbaikars have been putting up with the rain and accompanying mayhem, without even a glimpse of infrastructural respite, let alone the 7-coloured wonder.

I’m not a big fan of reducing sentiments to numbers, but consider these facts - 30% of India’s Income Tax collections come from Mumbai – but every monsoon, the common man, aka the ‘aam aadmi’, ends up asking where that money goes. Bridges collapse paralysing life, potholes cause fatalities and trees come crashing down mercilessly on bystanders. However, average ‘resilient’ Mumbaikars take it all in their stride. But mind you, this is not what people signed up for when they moved to the city of dreams. All metro cities in India are largely cosmopolitan. People from small towns, with big dreams flock to metros every day. These are honest people like you or me.

We work hard, party hard, meet our needs and raise our families. We do our duty and vote but it’s a thankless circle of deceit. Those slick and smooth dream merchants who Bollywood and popular culture talk up, find it easy to fool us. Politicians make promises and we, as trusting citizens fall for them time and again. Elected representatives fulfil perhaps one of five promises made to us and we are grateful that they have done at least that. But why don’t we hold the administration up to the high standards that we demand of ourselves? As honest employees and leaders in the corporate sphere, would it be acceptable if we delivered one out of five commitments made to our stakeholders and investors? Why do we settle for such shoddiness in our lives? After all, this is the world we are leaving behind for our children.

A metro city like Mumbai does deliver on a lot of the aspects that bring us here in the first place. Mumbai is a city of dreams. It is a place where wealth is grown, jobs are created, opportunities abound and stars are made. But at a fundamental level, can Mumbai offer us the life we deserve? Think of your first true love. Perhaps it begun with an inexplicable infatuation. In those early days, there are always those things that mesmerize you about that special person – their charm, a dazzling smile, their delightful sense of humour. It’s difficult to stay away. Mumbai was a bit like that for me. The Queen’s Necklace along Marine drive, the vast seashore, those incredible skyscrapers – they were mesmerising in the potential they held to change my world; to propel me into a life of happiness, health and meaning. But just like the glare of infatuation blinds you to the steady glow of settled love, the realities of metro life seemed pale in comparison to the initial excitement. 

For the aam aadmi who get deeply entangled in the first glow of infatuation, a decade down the line, their tryst with Mumbai becomes a hugely compromised marriage. Like in all unequal marriages, the union between the common man and the overpowering metro city dissolves into a private mess that neither side wants to openly acknowledge. And, like people stay in bad marriages, aam aadmi hold on to metro cities in the fragile hope of a better tomorrow.

While all around us life crumbles, work surges ahead. Infrastructure is crumbling, but ironically it’s never the government’s fault. The same people who couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger to change the situation, are quick to point fingers at everyone else. The ruling parties blame infrastructure issues on previous governments and even perhaps the British Raj. We have been ‘free’ as a nation for over 70 years now, but that freedom doesn’t assure us a dignified and safe life.

Every government sells their own dreams to the aam aadmi. Some want to convert our city to the ‘next Singapore’ with every aspect of life planned. Others promise to deliver Shanghai’s level of manufacturing capability – but what they have delivered is so far from the promise that it’s depressing to even look back at the promises. But we aren’t complaining – because we have the odd initiative thrown at us to appease us. You have some benches that sprout up, a couple of public toilets and it even gets as big as a bullet train or a metro railway system. But must we choose between basic infrastructure and progressive growth? Why are we compelled to make this compromise?

Next to those same ambitious projects, the common man is losing hope and sometimes their lives. Ambulances are getting stuck in traffic snarls, students are missing their exams, but we are ‘resilient’ through it all – in fact we have been resilient for the last couple of decades! It takes me 3 hours to cover 35 kms to get to work during these monsoons. This is about the same time it took me even 5 monsoons ago. Governments come and go, but this predicament doesn’t change – over years. Over those same 5 years, the taxes I pay have increased manifold, the tolls have just kept increasing – it’s just the inconvenience that is constant. Another constant is the quality of the leaders we elect.

But there’s a solution – there always is.

We should groom the youth of today to have a voice, and to believe that they can make a difference as elected representatives. The average age of our political leaders needs to drop by a couple of decades! Let’s replace experience with innovation – because our experience with leaders so far honestly leaves a lot to be desired. There are globally successful precedents to this trend including the 40-year-old French President, Emmanuel Macron – the only thing old about him is his winning old-world charm. There are also other lesson to be learnt from developed nations, like the use of technology for advanced governance. Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) etc. are avenues of progress, if converted into experiences that improve the quality of life. Let’s take VR and AR and make them essentials rather than accessories. Let’s use them to monitor traffic, to automate the testing of old infrastructure and to aggregate the voice of the people. Before you dismiss this, let us take real examples from across the world. Kuwait used a VR experience in March 2015 to project a situation and create an unprecedented level of empathy for a cause - this helped them raise 3.8 billion USD for the cause. Microsoft has demonstrated a concept for full telepresence through human holograms. It involves real-time 3D scans which will facilitate remote interactions with a much higher quality of human contact than video conferencing. Imagine what this can do - traffic will cease to be a problem if people don’t have to constantly be on the move, and imagine the possible impact on saving the environment. So, let’s put aside the problems and seek solutions. Let’s hold our leaders accountable to implement ideas that can make our lives match up to the perfection we seek out of our professional lives. We can be the difference we want to see.

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