The other day, I was going from my company (where I am doing my summer project) towards my home. It is a 45 minute journey in a tempo traveler. The company is at Sriperumpudur, around 40 kms from Chennai. This place is always in the news nowadays, with some news or the other coming up on a new company setting shop here, (Nokia, Motorola etc). This place is buzzing with lots of activities and these new industries have also created lots of employment opportunities.
These are the positive fallouts of Government’s support to industrialization. While all these are happening here, I always thought that the infrastructure in and around these places will considerably be improved. While there are some improvements (thanks mainly to Golden Quadrilateral), I was shocked at the scenes I saw during my journey. Throughout my 25 km journey towards Tambaram, I cross many villages. And to my dismay, I found that scores of school children walk towards their homes from school in the evenings due to lack of timely bus services. And most of them are bare footed. While the Government gives free bus passes to students, unless bus services are provided on time, what is the use of these free passes? The Government need not introduce new buses in this dilapidated road, but it can at least arrange for 2 extra trips by the regular buses between 4 and 5 in the evenings and 8 and 9 in the mornings. That is all required. Finding these young kids traveling on top of buses is really a saddening event. And all these scenes can be seen in just 5 kms from all these gigantic factories. And it is a big picture of contrast. I have seen so many Government buses which are used as chartered services in the evenings by the corporates. Cant a few extra services be run in these peak hrs for school children?
In one hand, you find companies investing millions in your state and on the other hand, even basis facilities are incomplete in many places even near these companies. And all these in a so called progressive State of Tamilnadu. I can imagine the state of school children in other states like Bihar, MP, UP etc. One feels that we get bogged down with these macro information like total investment, employment potential etc that we fail to study the micro problems in detail.
