In most cities around the world, the local government has a small amount of internal capacity too. It doesn’t outsource 100 per cent of its engineering work and does about 10 per cent in-house. This means that it has a budget for some materials like a few road-rollers and JCBs.
As a result, as and when potholes form, these in-house assets are deployed to fill them, particularly on the major roads, which carry a heavy traffic load, and could end up damaging vehicles if they are not repaired in time.
Even without in-house assets, potholes can be tackled swiftly. What we need is a forward-contracting system. For a few months before the new BBMP council was formed, the Karnataka Land Army was given a city-wide contract to fill all potholes, and Rs 5 crore was given to it up-front to do the job. As and when it did any filling work, it would get it certified by the local ward engineer and the local traffic sub-inspector, and the amount would be debited from the kitty.
Read: And so Rs 100 crore more down the potholes!
Whenever the money ran out, it was topped up. Without in-house assets or such a forward contract, we have to wait for lots of potholes to form first, and then call for bids from contractors to deal with them. All of that causes delay.
Why was this system ended? BBMP corporators argued that pothole filling was 'trivial work' that could be done by 'anyone', and there was no need for a large city-wide contract to get it done. Instead, they said, the job should be given to local contractors overseen by the corporators. Translation, the job needed to be given to someone 'known' to them.
