A LOGISTICS NIGHTMARE FOR GUJARAT

Gujarat’s three hours of American glory is a logistics nightmare for the State’s bureaucracy, which is said to be light years behind their tech-savvy visiting counterparts.

With an advance party, which is overseeing the security of US President Donald Trump, laying down guidelines, the Gujarat administration is stretched to its limits in compliance.

Even more so, because PM Modi wants the world’s largest stadium, where the US President will hold fort, to be packed to the brim.

Another constraint is that the road leading to the stadium should be chock-a-block.

This is never an issue in overpopulated India, except that the security manual of the US government governing its first citizen and first lady must be kept in mind. Thus, you have Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani and his top bureaucracy, including the police top brass, holding endless rounds of meetings in the state secretariat -- literally going through every inch of the ground.

Not the one to leave anything to chance, PM Modi will be in his home state the night before to review the preparations for himself.

The nature of the logistics can be gauged from the fact that over 1500 buses have been requisitioned to put together the required numbers at the stadium – 1.5 lakh. This would mean ferrying people from various parts of the state -- a journey that would entail from one to eight hours of travelling time.

This, in turn, would mean people boarding buses from the farthest point just past midnight to reach at the disembarkation point in Ahmedabad around 7 am and trudging to the venue, since no vehicles, except the VIPs and police, will be allowed in the vicinity of the stadium.

All the Trump function-bound State Transport buses have been fitted with GPRS system and will be accompanied by a revenue department official and a cop.

The stadium will open to the public at 9 am, may be even earlier, as the US President is slated to arrive past 11 a.m.

At the back-end, every individual being brought in needs to be security-vetted; so, the respective village sarpanchs and the village patwaris have been made the grass-root verifying entity. This, in turn, has entailed refresher workshops to bring them up to date with security compliances.

Since no food items, not even water, will be allowed to be carried inside the stadium, arrangements have been made for water and buttermilk to be served within. Similarly in case of medical emergencies, a 25-bed hospital has been provisioned. To ensure a pleasing uniformity for the viewing benefit of the American president, the entire mass of gathered humanity in the stadium will be sporting camps carrying the logo ”Namaste Trump”.

The government has put in place unprecedented security measures with giant screens at the Ahmedabad police commissioner’s control room linked to cameras en route to monitor the areas. Such is the level of paranoia building up in this regard, that 24 flower pots, where the metal detector beeped, were emptied of the soil content for a check. The plight of Ahmedabad municipal Corporation officials, who have been marked for duty at the

100 or so toilets made functional within the stadium and outside, invites empathy.