When a three-hour drive turns into a thirty-two-hour ordeal,
it’s not just an accident.

It’s a systems failure.
A failure of imagination.
A failure of preparation.

The Mumbai–Pune Expressway is one of India’s most travelled roads.
A symbol of modern infrastructure.
Speed.
Efficiency.
Progress.

And yet, one overturned gas tanker was enough to bring everything to a halt.

People were not just delayed.
They were trapped.
No food.
No water.
No toilets.
For hours.

This was not merely congestion.
This was collapse.

What does the Bhagavad Gita help us see here?

It presents two truths—both uncomfortable, both essential.

First, the Gita (8.15) states that this world is duḥkhālaya—a place of distress.
Problems are unavoidable.

Second, it (3.20) teaches lokasaṅgraha—the human responsibility of maintaining the world.
We are meant to ensure that unavoidable problems don’t become unnecessarily compounded.

And how our action, or inaction, can increase suffering is understood through the three gunas—the modes of nature.

In rajas, the mode of passion, we obsess over creation.
Build more.
Move faster.
Think bigger.
But we don’t pause to ask—
how will this be maintained when things go wrong?

In tamas, the mode of ignorance, we swing to the opposite extreme.
We complain.
We blame.
We break.
Without fixing anything. Or even learning anything.

But sattva, the mode of goodness, rises above both
the glamorization of rajas and the demonization of tamas.
It evaluates.
It anticipates.
It plans.
It cares about maintenance—not just expansion.

Sattva asks a simple, unsettling question:
What happens on the worst day?

Accidents will happen.
But hunger, dehydration, and helplessness don’t have to follow.
That is not destiny.
That is poor preparation.

We like to dream big.
We feel proud when our country aims high.
The Gita (7.11) affirms ambition itself as divine—provided it does not violate dharma.

In the context of the ambition to build huge infrastructure,
dharma becomes negative imagination—
the discipline of imagining failure before it happens
and preparing for it.

Optimism is good.
But attempting a massive leap without preparing for a possible fall
is not naïveté.
Not even negligence.
It borders on culpability.

A fail-safe plan is not pessimism.
It is maturity.

True leadership is not tested when systems work.
It is tested when they fail.

The Gita (18.43) states that leaders are meant to be resourceful
—able to anticipate worst-case scenarios,
not just celebrate best-case outcomes.

Let us seek sustainable progress—
not merely shiny achievements that gratify the ego,
but structural resilience that protects people
in real situations, on real roads, on real days of failure.