Indian Science Congress’ 101th session at Jammu brought together a large brigade of about eight thousand scientists from the country and abroad to the City of Temples. To make the show look grandiose and imposing, VVIPs led by no small persons but important dignitaries like the Vice President, the Prime Minister, the former President, the Union Ministers and the Chief Minister of J&K lent the Congress session much coveted projection. Such events are rarely held in small towns like Jammu, which has limited infrastructure to host such big and prestigious meets even if the meets are of much significance from national point of view. Selection of Jammu University as the venue of the session of science congress is a memorable event in the history of the State as it contributed to the familiarization of Jammu city to wider sections of academics, administrators, politicians and managers of social and public events. Jammu city may or may not find any specific benefits immediately accruing to its citizens, nevertheless in national context it helps Jammu attract the attention of vast upper strata of Indian society.
While we appreciate that it was a good idea to select Jammu as the venue for 101th session, we cannot help saying that there was poor rather unmindful arrangement of regulating public transport on the inaugural day of the Congress. On the basis of large number of complaints received from wage earners, office goers, school and college students, pilgrims, tourists, shopkeepers, patients, city transporters and the general public, one can say that the traffic department had done no homework on how to handle traffic hazards on this particular day. The result was total chaos in city traffic. What the traffic department should have done was to give a serious thought of how to regulate civic traffic with two main objectives; one to ensure security to the VVIPs coming to Jammu and second to see to it that public transport system was minimally disturbed or disrupted. But in a mood of demonstrating its predominance, the traffic police closed all the three bridges that link two parts of the City of Jammu hours before the cavalcades of the VVIPs would travel from Raj Bhavan to the University Campus. The traffic police enforced the writ with extraordinary severity and strictness, thus create a curfew like situation in the city. At places even the pedestrians were denied passage, not to speak of vehicular traffic. A situation of freeze on movement was created in an otherwise vibrant city. If the traffic police had decided to enforce the dead halt to normal life on that day, it should have advised the Government to announce public holiday and thus save millions of people the hazards they had to go through. We don’t mean to underestimate the importance of the VVIPs and their visit for participation in a grandiose function at the University Campus. But we do want to convey to the authorities the hardships and confusion and chaos to which the toiling masses of the city were exposed on that day, something which the authorities could have spared them if there was sensible plan of regulating traffic. In New Delhi city, where visits and movement of VVIPs is a matter of daily routine, the traffic department publicizes through print and electronic media days ahead of the event as to which roads would b e denied access and over which roads public transport can move. But the Jammu traffic police did not care to do any exercise of this sort and stuck to only one principle and that was that nobody should be allowed to move on the roads. They could have at least kept one bridge open for traffic while the other two were blocked. They could have diverted public transport connecting the interiors of old city through new flyovers and by-passes. They could have cut short the time of imposing restrictions on vehicular traffic on main streets of the city. But unfortunately as there was no pre-panning, everything went haywire.
Knowing that it was imposing numerous restrictions on movement of vehicular traffic, and the people would be forced to engage taxis and three-wheelers to reach the reachable stations, should not the traffic police have thought of controlling arbitrary demands of taxi and auto drivers who fleeced the commuters finding them in a situation of distress.
In final analysis we would suggest the traffic police department to focus on issuing traffic regulatory for such occasions as they think would be overloaded with heavy traffic or when the VVIPs are moving along the roads. Movement of an important person including the Chief Minister should not warrant closure of roads and bridges for the public who have to run their daily errands and earn their bread. They must think of infusing sense of responsibility and respectability among the citizenry and not become a pack of flatterers and creators of false ego.
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