Rahul Jacob: Jugaad in the capital, Delhi Metro style

An eye-witness report of working next to a Delhi Metro construction site

For more than a year, my office window has seemed like a giant screen-saver, changing from a sight of enormous pipes thrown this way and that one day to cement sacks piled haphazardly and left open to add to the daily dust storm created by this chaotic effort the next. This was the construction site for the Delhi Metro’s newest station; it often seemed a nonviolent battlefield, a site of destruction.
 
As deadlines for the opening of the station came and went, it was educational to watch the construction crew at work. Ten men usually hung about to keep the two actually, erm, working company. Welding work was almost always done without a safety visor. Road rollers were driven so fast they appeared to be an adult’s demolition derby. They should have offered tickets for the joy of riding in them as they might have done at a theme park. On several occasions, the very foundations of Business Standard’s office shook from such reckless driving.

 
Which is why June 8 will be long commemorated as a joyous day of good governance for the newspapers whose offices line Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg. The Metro station officially opened on Monday with the usual fanfare for the central government ministers and the New Delhi administration who graced the occasion. Enormous signs saying “MEDIA” pointed to the ceremonial area – as if we needed signposts to find this promised land for which we had been praying daily.
 
Miraculously, where there had long been piles of mud, unused granite slabs and the detritus of a construction site, on this special day when ministers were expected, there were now potted plants and streamers of marigolds. Fairy lights imported from China marked the occasion. Synthetic silver and pink cloth hung from the roof of the station, making the station seem like an al fresco marriage hall. A banner saluting the efforts of the Delhi Metro, Larsen & Toubro and a Shanghai city body was draped over the station. They must be applauded for bringing public transport to India’s toiling media masses on the nation’s hitherto anything but Fleet Street, even if they have been the untidiest neighbours we have ever lived beside.  
   

A Security guard scrolling through his mobile while a labrador looks out

On the day of the inauguration, however, the (belated) commitment to Swachh Bharat was exemplary. It’s true, though, that the plants of completely different heights and varieties looked like they had been borrowed from someone’s balcony, but this is a mere quibble. It’s just as well that those plotting to undermine our national security were otherwise distracted because the guard yesterday afternoon seemed much more interested in his smartphone throughout his inspection tour of gate number four immediately outside my office. For a moment, when he cruelly yanked the leash on the handsome Labrador by his side, I thought he was sensing danger to the public at large. But, it was merely irritation with the dog who was trying to coax the guard out into the harsh afternoon light to check if there were any bombs amid the marigolds. (At least one of them was taking his job seriously.)

Indeed, safety regulations have been revised completely to allow this extension to the metro, which has a single track reaching it as opposed to a minimum of two, which until now has been the norm. But, these are worries for another day. This is a happy occasion; in return for the sacrifice of parking space outside the building, we have a shiny new metro station and can connect to the rest of the city at the flick of a metro card. Now the VIPs are gone, however, the sacks of open cement are back and piles of bricks for work that should have been done long ago are once again on the pathway.  It ought to be a Harvard Business School case study of jugaad, Delhi Metro style.

Twitter: @RahulJJacob