Everyone knows what happened to our roads in Nagaland last year. Memory of the unprecedented landslide in several unexpected places where roads were completely washed away, leaving no visible trace of the existence of an earlier road, is still fresh in the minds of many people. The people of Pochury and Kiphere district, living beyond Meluri town, had a harrowing time, gambling with their own lives while attempting to cross those stretches of the damaged road.
If we have to fix responsibility for this man-made natural calamity, one of the chief reasons was negligence on the part of the concerned department in clearing the clogged drainage left unattended for years together. The other reason was the cable line laid all along the side of the narrow road which not only trapped rain water inside and destabilised the soil but also presented as a dead trap for drivers giving side to the oncoming motorist, as the loose soil easily sank. The water flowing from the road into the cable line buried underneath the camouflaged soil slowly wears away the edge of the road and gradually carried away the entire extent of the road in many places.
This year you will notice that cable lines are laid on the other side of the road by digging deep into the drain with huge earthmoving machineries. The most appalling thing about this new exercise is that boulders put in place along the drainage earlier by BRO are now removed and the cables are simply covered with soil. Whether or not the department concerned is going to mend the damaged drain by putting back the boulders we don’t know, but if there is a plan to do that, the boulders have vanished. Several truck loads of precious boulders removed from the bed of the drain and left on the roadside are collected and carried away gleefully by senseless happy-go-lucky citizens. This is nothing short of daylight robbery. Anyway, as of now, the road looks wider and smooth on the surface but come summer, this levelled soil will soon drop deeper and cause a catastrophe even greater than the previous years.
With our life line being battered and tattered left and right in front of our eyes, the question staring at us is whether there is anybody who really cares about the health and wellbeing of our road. The present trend seems to suggest that everybody wants to get the most out of the road, but nobody wants to put anything into it for its development and maintenance. This is a dangerous trend which will sooner or later boomerang on us unless we reset our minds and redirect the course of our action accordingly. We should realise that this is our road. We should own it and take responsibility. Spring season is here and we know what comes next. Let the people in authority know what is happening to our road. Our road is being abused. It cries for attention.
Rümatho Nyusou
