City roads and drains

All is not well with the roads and drains of Guwahati city. What The Sentinel reported on its front page in the Sunday issue relating to a couple of roads in Noonmati, Madgharia, Kharghuli, Lal Ganesh and Champaknagar is also true with the roads and drains in most other parts of the city. In Lal Ganesh and Champaknagar, as a responsible citizen has pointed out, the authorities have been repairing and renovating roads in bits and pieces, instead of taking up an entire stretch. While all residents of a particular road or locality pay tax to the GMC and the government, it amounts to flagrant violation of human rights when one section of tax-payers is deprived of a common facility whereas another section is favoured. And then look at the MLA; he laid the foundation stone for the reconstruction of a 120-metre stretch of the 200-metre strNoonmati, Madgharia, Kharghulietch of the road that was already constructed in 2007, instead of constructing the remaining 310 metres of the road for which the citizens have been pressing for the past decade or more! One would not be surprised if the expenditure in laying the foundation stone of the 120-metre stretch of road is close to, if not equal to or more than the estimated cost of the road-stretch itself. This kind of an activity has been going on in many other localities, with Ministers and MLAs – who generally cannot spare time to meet the common people having genuine grievances – finding time to lay foundation stones of even 50-60 metre road stretches by wasting public money. Moreover, the government which has no money to repair the existing roads is seen spending huge sums on beautification of pavements, which can be seen on many main roads across the city. About the drainage system, the less said the better. Citizens, whether in the Chandmari-Noonmati area or in the Panjabari-Chachal area will testify how roads and drains are being fiddled with by wasting public money in the name of tackling flash floods and water-logging. It is a common feature now across Guwahati that if one locality or one stretch of a road is freed of water-logging, then an adjoining locality begins to suffer. This is because, in the absence of engineering acumen and common sense, the departments concerned are only diverting water from one locality to another, depending upon citizens of which locality have more clout and can reach out to a powerful Minister. One recent set of such examples of criminal wastage of scarce public money are the culverts recently constructed on the VIP Road and the Panjabari Road.