The New Killing machines

Arjimand describes the pathetic condition of roads in the valley

(Mr. Arjimand Hussain Talib, 34, was born in Srinagar. He is a columnist/writer and a development professional who matriculated from Tyndale Biscoe Memorial School in 1991. He subsequently graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Bangalore University and has a diploma in journalism as well. He is an alumni of the International Academy for Leadership, Gummerbach, Germany and has worked with UNESCO, Oxfam and ActionAid International in some seven countries in Asia and Africa. Arjimand writes regular weekly columns for the Greater Kashmir and The Kashmir Times since 2000 on diverse issues of political economy, development, environment and social change and has over 450 published articles to his credit. He is presently an advisor in international development and based in Beijing.)


Of our Roads, R&B Department, Contractors and Aesthetics

Monotony of a chief minister’s life is not easy to cope with. Omar Abdullah is known to be an adventurer. He seems good at extracting acts of thrill from a life beset with a testing routine.

For quite a while now, Omar has often been seen driving from his Gupkar residence to Srinagar airport and other places. Lately, he has been doing something more exciting: darting from Jammu to Srinagar and from Srinagar to Bafliaz and Baltal in car rally styles.

It sounds good to see a CM driving himself, and, by default, get a feel of the ground. But the problem with such drives is that they happen in laboratory conditions. When the police and the traffic guys clear the roads of everything else (Cars, trucks, humans, animals, etc.), to get the real taste of a common man’s travel experiences is not possible. Omar’s driving times on these roads have set records.

J&K’s roads for a common man today are killing machines. The number of daily road accidents, the casualties, the abysmal road quality and dismal traffic management make us look uncivilized. Forget the advanced societies and the developing ones, today even sub-Saharan Africa’s roads are much better than ours. I can bet that.

Despite some good makeover of a few roads, Srinagar looks particularly pathetic. Of course, the new Galandar-Narbal By-pass sounds a good idea, but when will we fix the shabby and incomplete state of the critical Ali Jan Road, the Srinagar By-Pass, Hyderpora Flyover and numerous residential colonies? Do we have any plans to broaden up the inter-district roads, and improve them technically? Srinagar – the state’s face - gets peanuts for its roads. In 2009-10, it got a mere Rs. 389.60 crores in the district sector. Bandipora, Ganderbal and Islamabad (Anantnag) districts with much smaller populations and vehicular use got Rs 458 crore, Rs 360 crore and Rs 511 crore respectively.

For a ride towards civility, we need some real good spending on roads in the state. We need capacity building of R&B and Traffic Departments. R&B Department also needs a performance appraisal.

What we also lack is R&B’s interest in greenery and aesthetics. Engineers are known to love capital intensive works because it involves good money. Small works involving tree plantation, maintenance of landscapes and safety signs just don’t appeal. But doesn’t it require some questioning?

R&B Department also needs to apply some common sense in its working. It is unimaginable it doesn’t maintain a untied contingency fund with standby equipment and material to fix potholes on the roads. Our potholes normally wait for one year for funds to be released from the centre!

Our private contractors need some attention too. We need a system of their capacity evaluation and ranking them up accordingly. Most of them do not seem to have the professional project management systems. Their work quality needs on-spot monitoring.

The Traffic Department needs manpower, technical expertise, better equipment and training. It has since long been conditioned to primarily serve the sahabs of every kind. Pushing public transport into narrow lanes to keep the main roads clear for the VIPs in Srinagar is a big moral wrong. For a common man, VIP is more of a Very Interrupting/Intruding Person rather than what this acronym is traditionally known as.

Srinagar also needs the much-delayed traffic signals. It is well known that some of our VIPs hate the idea of traffic signals in Srinagar because they would be treated like anyone else at traffic crossings. But can they be allowed to veto this idea?

The spending on our roads is not good enough too. The district and state sector funds are paltry. Central Road Fund (CRF) money is fine, but it is limited, and mostly used on roads serving a strategic interest. Then we borrow massively from NABARD. For rural roads we love PM’s Gram Sadak Yojana money. But none of these help deliver quality roads.

The roads we are thought not to be efficient and resourceful enough to maintain go to the Border Roads Organisation (BRO). The latest one to go to them is the Handwara-Bangus road. But are these roads any better? Aren’t the Kupwara-Karnah, Bandipora-Gurez and other such roads maintained by BRO primitive?