There is no escaping streetscaping in the run-up to Commonwealth Games. Drive along major roads across New Delhi and you will find central medians being split, battered and restored with similar slabs of concrete.

Even as you struggle to dodge the discarded slabs that threaten to stray ever closer to the centre of the roads, though, take heart. The New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) has promised to complete “streetscaping and beautification” by August. Of the Rs 1,931.14 crore expenditure estimated in its budget for 2010-11, the share of “roads, public works and projects” has been pegged at Rs 425.49 crore, even as it is not clear just how much is being spent on the roads alone. In the case of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the figures are clearer if less ostentatious, as the Delhi Government last month sanctioned Rs 21.95 crore exclusively for streetscaping of roads around the Commonwealth Games venues. It stands to reason that the MCD should complete the job, exhaust the budget that is, if nothing else, before the Commonwealth Games as well.

What does not stand to reason, though, to say little of the desirability of rational use of scarce resources or, heaven forbid, aesthetics, is the government's idea of streetscaping and beautification. In a city being systematically scarred by the ugliest of concrete pillars along the metro's expanding routes, unattractive central medians can barely cause offence. But the absurd soon turns to the unpardonable when you look at the look-alike replacements. Even in rare cases where the newer slabs are a bit taller, or thicker, or redder, just how beautiful would they make the central median?

Doubtful as the case for this so-called beautification drive may be, it is clogging roads, holding up traffic, wasting precious time and fuel and causing heartburn among lakhs of drivers and pedestrians across the city.

To be sure, the issue is not confined to Delhi or Commonwealth Games or central medians alone. Holloway Road in north London was dug up 500 times within a year by April 2009 due to roadworks. Similarly, controversy raged over aesthetics versus safety in New York six years ago when one person died due to the barriers installed at the Park Avenue medians by the authorities that strived to replicate a touch of Paris. Streetscaping in Chicago has also led to raging debates in the past. Delhi has, then, caught up with the West.

It took one enterprisingly enraged resident to encapsulate the increasing resentment among Delhiites, in a telltale graffiti at Safdarjung flyover. Take a look at the accompanying picture. "Sometimes," it reads, "I hope the games are a disaster."