When Trouble Spots Act Up, the Expose Ineptitude

Editorial:
So, NH31-A is acting up again, the North Sikkim Highway remains a dangerous gauntlet to run and just about every other ‘highway’ has become a doubtful travel proposition now that the monsoons have arrived. Portions of roads across the State are either collapsing or getting buried. Yes, it is monsoons and the hills are fragile, even a lay person knows that. Fine, the concerned agencies, depending on which road is under stress, are clearing the debris or pushing up retaining walls, but even this much the lay people can do. Equipped with excavators and earth movers, every village along highways could double as road clearers, charging a retainer for their service to get the roads ‘open’. If the present level of service can be delivered with personnel with expertise in driving specialist vehicles, they why is an army of engineers being retained by Border Roads Organisation or the State Roads & Bridges Department? Why are there agencies with specific duties to look after roads being financed by the State and the Centre? If repair is all that these agencies can do, why not set aside budgets earmarked for villages around notorious trouble-spots? That way, the crores that go out on salaries towards engineers and experts at BRO or Roads & Bridges Department can also be invested directly on repairs and shared out among the ‘villagers’.
The point being made here is that repairs are short-term measures; measures that anyone confronted with a broken road will devise. What one expects of agencies with the human and material resources to look after roads, are more long-term corrections and better advance planning. It confounds all logic that a more permanent solution is not available for landslides that come down every year around the same spots. In these times of scientific temper, it is bewildering that the mechanics of road repairs has not developed beyond wire-meshed retaining walls and bull-dozer clearances. Given that NH 31A is a strategically important lifeline, by now, an inch-by-square inch mapping of the road alignment should have been at hand with projections on which contour can take how much rainfall before collapsing. A special cell should be monitoring the rainfall records at regular intervals to organise road-gangs and support equipment the moment precipitation hits the red band for a particular area. But these again are about response to road blockages. What NH 31A should have received by now is a proper plan on how to contain at least the troublespots that have troubled every monsoon for decades now. There can be no acceptable explanation for collapses and blockages at the same spots year on year. There is no excuse for why a long-term plan to settle these stretches is either not available or not successful. While Sikkim pushes the demand for an alternate highway, it should also start demanding that ‘real’ experts be commissioned to recommend the engineering basics that will hold together NH 31A more reliably in the future.