“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Charles Dickens knew something about institutional folly. It was the Dickensian season down Meru way this past week. There is a particular variant of political stupidity that dresses itself up in the bright, loud colours of development, builds big shiny things, cuts ribbons and poses for photographs with wide fake grins, and leaves communities to pay the catastrophic bill for decades.