ADDRESSING THE CHAOS

It’s yet another week and yet another day and yet another time we are caged inside our apartments. Shortage of testing kits or medicines has largely been addressed and migrant crisis has ended (because media no longer captures it), but is it really the case? Wait, wait, wait before we start the blame games let me break this topic down into two simple parts -  -What led to the crisis?  -What could have been done to prevent the crisis in the future? I will be specifically speaking about the migrant crisis which took place in Maharashtra due to the pandemic, before that let us learn something about Maharashtra first, yes this very state is ranked No.1 as per GSDP rankings which also contains our nation’s financial capital Mumbai which in itself houses more than 500 conglomerate companies. Maharashtra has the fastest developing infrastructure and transportation projects, yes!Did the metro ring a bell in your ears?  So now we have a brief idea to what numbers we might need manpower to support infrastructures and it’s maintenance and majority are non-maharashtrian. Also before we jump in can we now comfortably agree in all majority that  certain kind of system would have made our lives easier? Be it getting your Aadhar card, be it opening a bank account, be it making the whole surrounding online payments friendly, be it displaying or letting the people know the number of beds available in a hospital in real time. Which in-fact was the center point of the problem during the migrant crisis. Civil industry has always been deemed as the most unorganized sector, probably the reason why it’s working procedure has been kept under the wraps for decades now. And in 21st century in an era of technology don’t you think the industry which contributes 60% of GDP towards a nation honestly deserve more? At least more than a sheet of paper which contained the names of it’s manpower. So what is the solution? As a professional from this very industry I believe everything should have had a system, each contractor present in this nation shouldn’t be just on paper but also in the government server.  What will this move change? The contractor has to make online lists of workers under him, the companies currently using their facilities and then form a holistic approach towards the entire community of contractors, the crisis was not just a government mess up, I would say it was a system mismanagement. Once each contractor is listed on government servers with his own workforce, It would be easy to find alternative to make changes when required in their list, just a click and it will open doors of communication to every contractor for every government project not just relying on word of mouth or reputation but providing an equal opportunity. Yes! it is difficult and yes! we are late to jump on this bandwagon but it can address more causes in future.  Better to be late than sorry.

- Nishita Patil