Editorial:
Last Friday, a child on her way to school was swept away by a mountain brook which flows over the footpath she and her friends take to school. For most part of the year, this kholcha can be easily hopped across, the villagers of Shamshee-Sokpey in remote South Sikkim inform, but the monsoon has been intense this year and the brook flows furious. The child, 15-year-old Binita Gurung, was on her way to Sokpey Junior High School where she studies in class VI. This is not the first case of poor infrastructure in rural Sikkim claiming a life. The rural folk learn to be careful, but fatalities resulting from slips and falls from unreliable infrastructure are reported often. Reports of people being swept away by kholchas which cut through footpaths are rarer, but do take place.
The death of the teenager in question was due to an accident only in as much as it was not premeditated. The incident itself is not free of blame. It is inexcusable to have anyone, and children in particular, negotiate potentially treacherous tracts in the course of a routine day. All it would have taken to make the footpath safer was for even a temporary footbridge to be put in place. Village trails across the State have such bamboo contraptions which people use only when the brooks run fast and heavy. Such spans do not need major funding or engineering expertise and can be put together in half a day’s investment of community work. Unfortunately, community involvement is now seen only at government-sponsored or media-driven voluntary works like plantation and clean-up drives; the instinctive volunteerism which underlines social contracts appears to have disabled itself in Sikkim. Was this the case at Shamshee-Sokpey? Guess we will never know that, but what is definite in the picture this incident paints of rural development is that planning is still completed at an unhealthy distance away from the people. Had people been involved in the planning and decision-making process, they would have definitely sought a footbridge at this section before they received funds, say, for another footpath. It would be advisable for the officials concerned to investigate whether a demand was ever placed for a bridge at this spot [as it must have most definitely been tabled] and then study why it was not granted. This exercise is not suggested to place blame, but to understand which strand of red tape ties up need-based demands and buries them in such deep corners that it takes the death of a minor to put the spotlight on necessary, but still awaited infrastructure.
It is not rare for misplaced priorities to come at fatal costs. Some months back, a youth fell to his death from a bridge at Rodong, a village below Gangtok. In this case as well, the infrastructure was in shambles, but the request for repairs/ replacement ignored. This bridge has now been barred but continues awaiting repairs. The users have the option of wading across the khola below or taking a very long detour. At Shamshee-Sokpey as well, the people will avoid sending their children on this trail to school for a few days. The immediate danger might pass, but the institutional defect which cannot sift the necessary from the whimsical or the urgent from the casual will remain. This is why the investigation suggested above is necessary – so that the people and the officials understand where the compelling arguments of need-based demands and requirements get diluted. The Chief Minister has been stressing that people should bring forward demands which rise from them and have not been lobbied for by contractors and officials who will benefit from them. This is not a casual remark. It is a necessary course-correction to set the priorities right. Planning with the people instead of for them will be a good place to begin from. If departments were not building bridges where no roads exist, or forcing village roads in the face of protests by the villagers themselves, they would have found the funds and resources to provide footbridges where they were urgently required and repair structures from where people were falling to their deaths...
Last Friday, a child on her way to school was swept away by a mountain brook which flows over the footpath she and her friends take to school. For most part of the year, this kholcha can be easily hopped across, the villagers of Shamshee-Sokpey in remote South Sikkim inform, but the monsoon has been intense this year and the brook flows furious. The child, 15-year-old Binita Gurung, was on her way to Sokpey Junior High School where she studies in class VI. This is not the first case of poor infrastructure in rural Sikkim claiming a life. The rural folk learn to be careful, but fatalities resulting from slips and falls from unreliable infrastructure are reported often. Reports of people being swept away by kholchas which cut through footpaths are rarer, but do take place.
The death of the teenager in question was due to an accident only in as much as it was not premeditated. The incident itself is not free of blame. It is inexcusable to have anyone, and children in particular, negotiate potentially treacherous tracts in the course of a routine day. All it would have taken to make the footpath safer was for even a temporary footbridge to be put in place. Village trails across the State have such bamboo contraptions which people use only when the brooks run fast and heavy. Such spans do not need major funding or engineering expertise and can be put together in half a day’s investment of community work. Unfortunately, community involvement is now seen only at government-sponsored or media-driven voluntary works like plantation and clean-up drives; the instinctive volunteerism which underlines social contracts appears to have disabled itself in Sikkim. Was this the case at Shamshee-Sokpey? Guess we will never know that, but what is definite in the picture this incident paints of rural development is that planning is still completed at an unhealthy distance away from the people. Had people been involved in the planning and decision-making process, they would have definitely sought a footbridge at this section before they received funds, say, for another footpath. It would be advisable for the officials concerned to investigate whether a demand was ever placed for a bridge at this spot [as it must have most definitely been tabled] and then study why it was not granted. This exercise is not suggested to place blame, but to understand which strand of red tape ties up need-based demands and buries them in such deep corners that it takes the death of a minor to put the spotlight on necessary, but still awaited infrastructure.
It is not rare for misplaced priorities to come at fatal costs. Some months back, a youth fell to his death from a bridge at Rodong, a village below Gangtok. In this case as well, the infrastructure was in shambles, but the request for repairs/ replacement ignored. This bridge has now been barred but continues awaiting repairs. The users have the option of wading across the khola below or taking a very long detour. At Shamshee-Sokpey as well, the people will avoid sending their children on this trail to school for a few days. The immediate danger might pass, but the institutional defect which cannot sift the necessary from the whimsical or the urgent from the casual will remain. This is why the investigation suggested above is necessary – so that the people and the officials understand where the compelling arguments of need-based demands and requirements get diluted. The Chief Minister has been stressing that people should bring forward demands which rise from them and have not been lobbied for by contractors and officials who will benefit from them. This is not a casual remark. It is a necessary course-correction to set the priorities right. Planning with the people instead of for them will be a good place to begin from. If departments were not building bridges where no roads exist, or forcing village roads in the face of protests by the villagers themselves, they would have found the funds and resources to provide footbridges where they were urgently required and repair structures from where people were falling to their deaths...
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