A private State

When a regular and sovereign State passes into the hands of a few individuals who become law unto themselves, it is a private State. In a State of this category, it is no wonder if the interests of the public are compromised and those of a selected few conceded. Can you imagine the managers of a private State telling people that they will have to wait for at least six months to find the roads in the capital city repaired or re-surfaced and its potholes filled while those in which influential few are interested are repaired and resurfaced within days?
Main roads and streets in two capital cities of the State are in a dismal condition. Potholes and broken surface with enormous illegal encroachment have rendered motoring through the streets of the two cities extremely hazardous and bumpy. It leads to huge traffic jams. Most parts of these roads become pools of water when there is rain. For pedestrians, it becomes extremely difficult to walk the footpaths. When this is the State of affairs of city roads and streets, what will be the condition of roads in towns and villages? The impression one gets is that the capital cities are no man’s land, because the R&B Department is nowhere visible.  In an earlier editorial, we have laid bare the failure of the Government to implement the Gramin Sadak Yojna that had been sponsored and funded by the Central Government but was never completed.
We understand that when the matter of repairing the roads of the two cities came up before the new Government, it decided to replace repairing and patchwork by re-surfacing the roads. According to an estimate of the R&B Department, nearly 1800 kilometers of road-length need re-surfacing. Funds also stand allocated to this head of expenditure. However, the engineers have decided to put off the re-surfacing project until October when monsoon rains are over. The Department advises people and commuters to bear with them. We do not buy this theory for many reasons. In the first place, monsoons have been a regular feature of weather condition in our State. It is not something new. Previously, the Department carried repair and resurfacing work even during monsoons or casual rains. In UK, for example, rains come everyday but road repair and road-building work does not stop.  They have latest machinery and engineering skills that defy weather conditions. In many parts of Southern India, there are regular rains but that does not stop road repair work in any case.
Secondly, if owing to monsoon rains re-surfacing is put off until October does that mean that repair work or patchwork urgently needed at many vulnerable places, too, has to be deferred until October? We fail to understand the logic behind such a decision. In addition, presuming it is a correct decision, how some of the few selected patches have received repairs and re-surfacing right now? Is it because some high up or influential person has persuaded the department to do the re-surfacing for the benefit of a few people with stakes? Does it mean that there is privatization of the R&B Department and it caters selectively? We have concrete examples to support our contention. At least in Jammu, wherever patchwork repair and re-surfacing are done it has a political or personal hand behind it.
R&B seniors when contacted have a different story to tell and they want to bring the onus on the Government. Their contention is that the Government has imposed more strict conditions on contractors, which makes it difficult for them to bid and begin repairing and resurfacing of the broken roads and streets. Sadists ask the question whether the hardened conditions are not suiting the contractors or the R&B functionaries who are used to get their share in the spoils. The Government has imposed new conditions after it gained experience from past examples. The fact of the matter is that the contractors have formed a nexus in which some Government functionaries are accomplices. They are indirectly issuing threats to the Government that there will be general boycott of the tenders if floated under new conditionalities. This is blackmailing and we are sorry to say that the contractors might be receiving covert support from functionaries. This nexus needs to be broken at any cost.
The R&B Department should come out of its “privatization” mindset and begin repairing of roads particularly such segments where there is huge traffic rush and mobility and repair is unavoidable. It may wait until October for resurfacing but why not fill the potholes and undertake maintenance work right now.

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