Brickbats for hard work!
- Sangai Express Editorial :: January 16, 2014 -

Imphal city has changed a lot in the last few years and it presents a bizarre spectacle.

Some sections of roads are smooth and some are as rough as it can be.

One often finds oneself mistaken when road repairing works started with great promises only to be abandoned midway or without covering the entire length of the road.

Again some sections of roads are elevated while the next sections are kept depressed thereby making driving as well riding on these roads a nightmarish experience.

These haphazard variations in road levels are one factor contributing to frequent road accidents. Some roads, for reasons best known to the concerned authority are never repaired.

These roads are filled with puddles during rainy season and they are as good as mule tracks during dry season. One cannot see the vehicle moving in front because of huge columns of dust stirred up by the preceding vehicle.

Some roads are closed to vehicles for sometime because volume of traffic on these roads is quite heavy.

Then the same roads, at least half of its breadth, would be turned into parking lots.

While one-way traffic norm is applied to four-wheelers, two-wheelers are given free passage irrespective of whatever directions they come from and heading to.

Even as the roads are heavily congested, security forces as well as VIPs with security escorts simply bulldozed their way yelling and shouting all the while with disdain much to the discomfort of the general public.

After many families were displaced by taking over their homestead plots for expansion of roads, considerable breadth of the expanded roads is left out of road construction works.

In another words, roads have been expanded but their breadth fit for vehicular traffic remains more or less the same.

The problem of congestion is further aggravated by converting large parts of bridges into parking lots. The same problem gets multiplied with street vendors occupying footpaths of many busy bridges.

On the other hand, many bridges which would require neither eviction nor compensation are never repaired or re-constructed on one pretext or another. This sorry state of affairs is about Imphal alone.

From this picture, one can easily imagine what the situation is like in areas away from the capital city.

Everybody is aware that construction/repairing of roads and bridges costs huge amounts of money and Manipur is a poor State.

Yet, Government of India has been investing huge amounts of money for construction of roads and bridges in the State. The problem lies in either absence of a sound policy or failure to implement it.

People never ask the Government to repair all the roads at the same time. What matters to the people is construction of roads in proper manner with due emphasis on the qualitative aspect.

It is irritating yet it is a common sight that many roads are repaired only to be abandoned incomplete or half-done. Construction and maintenance of roads in Manipur seem a strange affair.

Roads get worn out quite fast which otherwise should last at least 5-10 years primarily because repairing is not done in time.

Another bewildering practice is repairing and black-topping roads which are already in good shape instead of repairing roads which are in the worst shape just because VIPs travel mainly on the first set of roads.

The same practice applies to bridges too. Many major bridges are simply kept to themselves on the excuse that there is no fund.

At the same time, many new bridges were constructed on the ground that they were important for improving connectivity.

After they were completed, the so called key bridges were turned into markets and parking lots thereby multiplying people's woes.

It is for this haphazard, disoriented manner of executing public works that the Government is often lambasted as bereft of planning and orderliness.

The Government has been, in fact, executing many public welfare programmes.

Still it receives more brickbats and bouquets. This is the tragedy of the incumbent Government.