Nfor the first time, civic responsibilities are being shouldered by citizens after the authorities fail to do their job. On Sunday, around 200 residents of Sus village and including eight commuters from other places who use that road, crowd-funded and repaired approximately 100 potholes on a 5 km stretch of Pashan-Sus Road, running between Pashan and Nande village.According to villagers, work on reconstructing the road was initiated about five years ago by the public works department (PWD) but left unfinished due to a dispute over jurisdiction between the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA) and the gram panchayat of Sus.While the two had locked horns, residents and hundreds of commuters who take the road were left negotiating a bumpy and pot-holed thoroughfare for five years. All their entreaties to PMRDA fell on deaf years. “It is an extremely busy and congested road. With the Symbiosis campus along the road, it would get repaired every time a VIP came calling. However, the quick fixes did not last long and the road was back to being potholed. The move by the villagers is remarkable, especially in the light of the government’s failure,” observed Kiran Patil, a resident of Pashan.“We are proud of ourselves, having completed the work and helped so many people using the road. There were rampant accidents on this road and we needed to do something to stop that. Government interventions did not help and the quality of the road they built saw it crumbling every time it rains. The material used by us will at least ensure the road remains intact for a year or two,” informed Madhura Jadhav, a resident of Sus.The citizen’s initiative is, interestingly, being welcomed by the authorities who should have done the job. “There is a huge list of roads that need to be fixed and it is a challenge for PMRDA to respond with any immediacy. We have identified many roads across the city and drawn up plans to work on them. However, we are also open to giving permissions to societies and individuals coming together to take on the job at hand of their own volition, as we did in Wagholi,” Kiran Gitte, chief executive officer of PMRDA told Mirror.