If history gave Kochi the sobriquet “The Queen of the Arabian Sea” our present day crop of politicians, bureaucrats, and power brokers are busy providing her with a new sobriquet “The Robber of the East”
The British raj, whose sole purpose of existence in India was to loot the country’s resources constructed two large bridges in Kochi: the Venduruthy Bridge, and the Thoppumpady Bridge. They never collected toll on these bridges. Fast forward to circa 2000. We construct two bridges parallel to these two old bridges. And what do we do? The Gammon Bridge, build parallel to the Thoppumpady Bridge was the first instance of BOT or Build-Operate-Transfer in Kerala. So successful was this model for the powers that be, that they extended this concept all over India and now we probably have more toll booths than paan shops and kirana stores combined. For the record, when the public protested that the toll rates were too high, the powers that be responded by extending the period of toll collection from 13 years to 19 years!
Now, the parallel bridge for the Venduruthy Bridge, the Kundanoor Bridge has a similar story. This bridge, constructed much earlier than the infamous Gammon has already recovered the investment many times over, but toll collection continues. No prizes for guessing that the government never releases data regarding the amount collected. To add insult to injury, the bridge is in a depilated condition. The hapless citizen now have to pay about 30 percent of the vehicle cost as tax, nearly 50 percent of the cost of petrol as tax, toll tax, and then suffer from poor mileage and wear and tear of the vehicle owing to the potholes in the bridge, for the supposed maintenance of which the tollbooth exists. More fuel and more spares means more taxes, so it actually benefits the economy, our economists would argue.
Now, to Pulleppady Rail Overbridge, I guess the authorities mistook the abbreviation for Rail Over Bridge (ROB) as the actual word itself and took it as a license to ROB the hapless commuters who happen to ply that way. Now they are showing signs of desperation to demolish the North OverBridge and possibly install another ROB. This extreme eagerness comes when they have not been able to cut a single tree that has been obtruding traffic at Jos Jn. for over eighteen years now.
With public protests mounting on toll collections extending beyond the required period, the powers that be have now decided on a easier solution: collect toll perpetually. God says the world will end one day. But the charter to collect toll at Kumbalam, near the Aroor bridge proclaims that the toll collection shall go on FOREVER.
Image Credit: flickr.com/Ron Reiring