There has been a lot of talk about poor roads over the past three decades or so, which may come as a surprise to some of us who believe this sort of thing ought to be resolved a lot faster. What most people don’t seem to realise is that a big city like Bombay needs time to build roads, maintain them, then keep maintaining them. Without constant rounds of maintenance, the BMC will not be able to dip into its annual budget for roads, which cannot be allowed to happen. Repairs are the lifeblood of economic growth in Maharashtra because they keep income flowing to people who matter.

This may explain why a 120-metre stretch in Bandra can take more than 100 days to fix, instead of a week at best. If that sounds unreasonable and smells a little fishy to the more cynical folk amongst us, I must say that this suspicion is all in your mind. If you have questions about why these processes seem unnecessarily drawn out, you can always take it up with the contractors responsible, if you can find any of their names on the noticeboards placed around road repair sites. I am also sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why these names don’t appear as often as they used to.