Given the speed with which the construction work has been going on Rambagh-Jehangir Chowk flyover in summer capital Srinagar, it would not be wrong to declare it as a heritage project once the project is complete. But the completion date has been stretching from months to years. And there seems to be no end in sight on the construction part. The project has already missed many deadlines and it is likely to skip the new deadline too. From the last so many years, people have been told that the flyover will ease all the woes of commuters who intend to reach the heart of Srinagar city. But the project never gets completed. Why is it that a barely two kilometre long flyover takes years to get completed? First and foremost is the work culture of the state’s bureaucracy. The administration in Kashmir slumps into inertia when it comes to implementation of developmental works. The structure of bureaucracy in J&K is such that if an officer sits on a file for years, no questions will be asked of him or her. Because corruption is so endemic and rampant, there is no mechanism to deal with these delays. Second, the tussle between the implementing agency which is the Economic Reconstruction Agency and the contractor has hampered the work on this prestigious project. The contractor had even recently stopped work amid allegations of delayed kickbacks. Third, the human resource working on the project comes from the mainland. Once the winter sets in, they flee to their homes. This has cost the state badly in terms of time and resources. With winter settling in Kashmir for more than four months, the progress of work on the flyover has been badly hit. Fourth, the lack of total oversight by the government on the pace and quality of work gives the contractor a leeway which has ultimately resulted in delay of many years in completion of this project. The state has seen at least two chief ministers and two governors since the time the flyover was conceptualised. While the governments have come and gone, the flyover is nowhere in sight. In its place, there are only the monstrous concrete pillars which have made a mess of the road stretch from Ram Bagh to Jehangir Chowk. The project may see the light of the day this year, or maybe not, but the manner in which it has been executed is a scathing indictment of the failure of the state government’s governance delivery mechanisms. This trend needs to change.