Read this news "Vendals rob Bandra of skywalk escalator" (DNA 27.04.13) that reported a 'typically Mumbai like' trait resulting in damaging an escalator beyond repair and its metal parts pilfered. Costing rupees 55 lakhs in 2010, it saw a few footfalls.
Claiming that people don't want to use a given facility, a senior official of the installing authority MMRDA reportedly said: "It's better to have a staircase instead... Clearly, we lack basic civic sense."
Usually automation-technology is warranted where there is need to eliminate 3-d i.e. dirty-danger-difficult activities from a typical daily repetitive-work. This is practised as a 3-K concept (kitanai-kiken-kitsui respectively) of Kaizen originated in Japan.
Also through training and awareness, by default the target-users of automation are supposed to be upgraded in their knowledge-skill-&-attitude (KSA) to make use of it as-desired alongwith effectivity of the security if needed and posted there to ensure it's proper-use.
Before undertaking such projects, I am sure MMRDA might have spent lakhs in making a techno-economic feasibility report for infrastructure across mega-city like Mumbai to ease traffic jams, comprising projections of usage of it's equipment such as this escalator. Such a report if it is adequate is supposed to cover strategies to tackle corresponding KSA issues as well.
In absence of validating adequacy &/or compliance of reports on which such projects are based and executed, blaming that people "lack basic civic sense" is like passing on the buck.
About automation such as escalators at public places in particular (barring in malls, private places, etc. where adherence, user-readiness, etc. is much better), knowing non-readiness of the Indian users in terms of their KSA, should we not make such investments with enhanced care?
Very often such technological automation oriented projects in particular get 'declared' in a haste under the influence of post-tour-enthusiasm to convert 'Shanghai-out-of-Mumbai' and 'Singapore-out-of-Solapur' after so-called study-tours abroad.
In order to avoid resultant waste in terms of material and intangible-time (lost in projects that get delayed endlessly forward and lost in re-winding those backward when non-functional) and opportunity-lost-costs, many such projects in-pipeline need revisit to validate their need itself.
May be some are necessary but some other projects may get head-lined (like "vendals rob Bandra of skywalk escalator") in newspaper as "skywalks: a boon to joggers as 'sky-tracks'" and "escalators: a boon to children as 'hi-tech-slides'".
If one were to remember fate of Girgaum-Chowpatty escalator, perhaps the first ever at a public place in India, time will tell who (in their own but expensive language) 'lacks sense' unless a knowledgeable and objective revisit is undertaken in order to eliminate emotionality if any in decisions about such projects in-pipeline.
