Hello Mr PM and Mr CM,

At the outset I would like to congratulate both of you on having completed one year and 100 days in your respective offices. After assuming office, both of you had shared vision of 'rising India and Delhi' and listed a number of challenges that your respective governments would face in realising those dreams.

Now that both of you have spent considerable time in power in your respective offices, you must have wielded necessary influence over the agencies that make up the system. However, as a Delhiite, I feel not much has changed on the ground and the following areas continue to remain detrimental to development of New Delhi as a world-class city (like during the tenure of previous governments).

1. Traffic and Parking: Delhi is a city stuck on roads. Traffic has emerged as a major problem in the national capital. Every individual wastes hours of his/her precious time daily battling bumper-to-bumper traffic, most of which is caused by illegal parking, encroachments, reckless driving, and last but not the least, lack of traffic policemen. Not much has been done in the last one year to solve this problem. Little resolve has been seen on the part of the MCD, an autonomous body, and police, which comes under the purview of the Centre through the office of the Lieutenant Governor, to tackle the problems and ensure a smooth ride on Delhi's roads. Failure to act against people who don't follow rules of driving and parking, those who encroach upon roads and public space - both shopkeepers and hawkers, etc. has compounded the problem. In short, driving in some areas of the national capital is like experiencing hell.

2. Pollution: For years, we were feeling shocked to see the "smogged" skyline of Beijing. We had failed to realise we had a bigger problem back home. Over the course of past two years, we have realised that Beijing is nothing when compared to Delhi in terms of air pollution. The Indian capital is now being infamously called a gas chamber. The verdict has already been delivered - if our children are raised in the city, they would lose most of their lung function by the time they become adults! That respiratory diseases affect Delhiites was a known fact, but that the problem was so grave has been realised only in the recent past.

The Chinese authorities have taken a slew of measures to de-pollute Beijing's air, but we see only words and little action here in Delhi to achieve the same. NGT guidelines mostly remain on paper; implementation is rarely monitored. Thousands of cars are added to Delhi's roads every month, and there's no policy to check growing vehicular burden on Delhi's roads unlike the Chinese capital. This has undone the transition to CNG as public transport fuel and introduction of Metro. Industries have been shifted to outskirts but still there are sources of businesses that cause air pollution. In short, for a Delhiite, it takes a trip to mountains or a foreign nation to experience what it feels like to inhale pure oxygen.

3. Illegal Construction: We have been talking for years how Delhi falls under seismic zone four and a major earthquake can flatten most part of our national capital in no time. However, like previous governments, the current dispensations at Centre and in the city have done little to check illegal/unauthorised construction and ensure building norms are being followed in every single construction. The MCD-Police nexus that allows such construction continues, with the BJP-ruled municipal corporation having come to be known as one of the most-corrupt civic bodies in the country. So, Mr PM you cannot blame anyone but your government if it has failed to rein in MCD, which is ruled by your party (BJP), and under-your-control police.

4. Cleanliness: Both our PM and the Delhi CM have launched cleanliness campaigns of their own, with the central Clean India campaign being ambitious enough to have target year 2019 by when we will get rid of the filth on our roads, garbage in our streets, and will have toilets in all houses. Much of the onus lies on citizens to ensure the mission is a success and targets are achieved. And that is probably the reason why we are witnessing non-participation of authorities and a failure of the mission so far. Funds have been allocated and toilets are coming up in rural areas (not all but some), but in cities like Delhi, no major change has been witnessed. In fact, the government should have made Delhi a test case for Swachh Bharat mission. But, that's not the case. People continue to urinate and defecate in the open due to lack of toilets. And we have not seen many new toilets come up in the city. Filth continues to destroy the image of Delhi as the capital city of an upcoming superpower.

The city lacks an ample number of dustbins and very few seem to have been installed on roads and in localities in the past one year. We have to remember that the level of civic sense and awareness in India is not like, say Japan, where people carry waste back home if they don't find dustbins. Here, the government has to facilitate the disposal of garbage and penalise if people still don't mend their ways (especially those who have a habit of throwing garbage on roads from their cars). Street-to-street campaigns will need to be taken up to educate people on keeping our cities clean. Garbage collection and disposal will have to be taken up seriously by the government like in developed world capitals. Government will also have to come up with a plan to remove dust from roads.

The initial effort will have to be made by the government in a country like India, and citizens will most likely follow if they see change (case in point – cleanliness on Delhi Metro premises). And non-abiding entities will have to be penalised harshly if rules are not followed. Only then are we likely to start seeing change and a clean Delhi.

5. Shoddy development: Governments at the Centre and in the city have been spending crores and crores every year on Delhi's infrastructure needs. New roads, pavements, flyovers, underpasses, subways etc are coming up in every part of the city or old ones are being refurbished. However, the quality of construction is such that repairs are needed at a very short gap and such activity has become unending. This is mainly due to corruption, missing government oversight and lack of skills/expertise on part of contractors carrying out such projects.

Unlike in foreign cities, most of our civil infrastructure is built with a short lifespan. Also, many projects remain half-completed, perfection is nowhere to be seen, and the finished product rarely matches the project design. Delhi Metro is a shining example of our engineering but that too lacks the fit and finish which we see in metro systems in foreign countries. Some saving graces are the new airports coming up in the country, like in Delhi. In the national capital, we have not managed to fool-proof our roads from annual rain; drainage system remains in shambles as always, defective water pipelines continue to allow sewage water being pumped into homes, and power lines continue to trip in peak summer. It is difficult to fathom why we need to rebuild locality drainage network again and again using brick and mortar every two to three years - why can't we use concrete and make sure the same doesn't need to be redone for at least a decade. It is shameful that in 21st century, we build the kind of infrastructure that used to be built in early 20th century.

In the end, I only want to say that it would be better if a 'non-corruptable' CM and a 'development-oriented' PM join hands and turn Delhi into a world-class city. If you both fail, it will be a shame for India.