Gokarna street widening

blackbird

Enacting a government directive (said to date back to 1974, but I haven't checked this fact), Gokarna's main street is in the process of being widened, as I understand has happened in many other towns.

So the other day, government workers turned up and vandalised all the shop fronts in the historic Car Street. Then they left the shopowners to complete the job of removing all construction at the front of their buildings, and rebuild their shop fronts 2-3ft further back. So for the last few days most of the shops have been closed, and the street is full of dust and rubble. Unpleasant for locals, pilgrims and tourists alike, and an expensive situation for the traders with lost income, and costs of demolition and rebuilding.

I can see the case for widening a main highway through a town (although in western countries we build bypasses), but in Gokarna the street only goes down to the beach and was coping perfectly well with the level of traffic, especially as there is a functional one way system, and besides, Car Street is already relatively wide.

Perhaps some of the traders have illegally encroached the street, but some of the buildings are 150 years old and in many other countries would be protected by law. They also appear to have destroyed parts of supporting walls and beams, so there is a worry that some buildings may have suffered potentially dangerous structural damage and might even collapse.

I bet the government officials are absolutely loving it... and when they widen the road, some favoured construction company will do very well out of it. And it's all very well increasing the area of road surface, but will they increase the pitiful maintenance budgets? I doubt it.

The traders seem to have accepted their fate and are obviously working flat out to get the job done... it's expected that in a couple of week's time everything will be back to normal.