This article is a humble request to UMC and UIT to kindly reimburse me for my car maintenance bill. Every day I have to travel roughly 25 kms on Udaipur roads. My mechanic says that jumping up and down the pothole ridden roads has added a maintenance bill of Rs 1 per km to my travel. So, it is my humble request to kindly reimburse me with Rs 750 per month(30 days* 25 kms * Rs 1 per km). 

It is also my humble to kindly help me understand where my tax money goes. My understanding was that our tax payer money goes into providing basic amenities to citizens including roads, medical services, education, water, electricity etc. I pay my taxes regularly and also file the return. In return, I demand to know where is this money spent AND who monitors the effectiveness of money spent?

If tax payer money is being spent on elements like road construction, is it not our right to know why does a road need repair every year? Is it an acceptable excuse that roads get damaged due to monsoon – does it not reflect on construction quality? I would not like to accuse that legislators are hand in hand with contractors and making money out this – but current conditions do lead to such questions.

We should also have a smart UIT/smart UMC along with a Smart City. A smart UMC/UIT that measures the effectiveness of every Rupee spent from the taxpayer money. A municipal corporation that questions whether spending Rs 8 Crore on creating a dome for Prime Minister’s 2 hour address makes more sense than improving the basic infrastructure of the entire city. A number of trees were placed in huge pots across the city when Vasundhara Raje had come for a visit a couple of years back – all that is nowhere to be scene. We have elevated police posts erected at Fateh Sagar, Surajpole and other places – but no policemen ever use that. Who accounts for this waste? If this had happened in any well-functioning corporate, the entire implementation team would have been fired by now.

While creating a smart city, please also help us in become smart citizens. As smart citizens, we need to be more demanding of our administration – raise our voices when our basic needs are not met, when unwarranted spends are made, when inefficiencies and leakages creep into our systems.

Dear UIT/UMC – don’t bother if acting efficiently seems overwhelming. Take the easy way out – please pay back my Rs 750 per month car maintenance out of the tax that I paid.