Development Ahoy!

Our colony is a small two lane thing. The roads are decent. There are good, sturdy footpaths. There is a small park protected by a little wall.

Shortened wall and iron bars

People can and do jump over the park wall and night to enjoy the act of breaking rules, commune with other nocturnal animals and consume some beverages of alcoholic nature. Nothing serious so far and all is well.

Mud on the walking track - as people walk it gets compacted and distributed 

A few weeks ago, our colony committee went into a development drive. The footpaths were pulled out, all the tiles lying like extracted teeth by the side of the road, the wall was knocked off to shorten its height and long iron bars erected on top and much activity. I was fine with the iron bars - keeps out wall jumping activity and also allows for better view of the park (though I am not a huge fan of seeing bars in open spaces). However I found the footpath work rather curious. Having extracted all the tiles, they proceeded to lay them back again and cemented it, replacing the broken ones in the process. I mean stuff that they broke while removing them that is. What were they thinking? Anyway, tiles were taken out, and put back in place involving several workers and perhaps a few lakhs of rupees work.

The footpath outside my home - same tiles out and back in, except two or three that they broke 

At the same time, I found that the nearby park had also gone into overdrive in terms of development. The tiles along the footpaths were extracted there as  well, fresh mud was strewn about on the walking track which was doing quite well thank you, the boundary walls height increased, the little lake dredged and cleared and for best effect, the lake bund half painted.

A nicer view of our new bars - we can look in from the outside, the park looks out from the inside

Can't argue with development but seriously, half these activities are purposeless and merely causing inconvenience or spoiling what is already there.

The park walkway stripped of some innocent tiles that had done no wrong

None of the people I spoke to had any clue about it and nodded sympathetically. Anyway, the monsoon budget has been spent in things productive and non-productive and we moved on. Some pictures to remind me of development in a developing country. Or are we fully developed already?