BY THE EDITOR
For the uninitiated, the sight of people planting paddy saplings and engaging in a bout of angling in the water-filled craters on National Highway 6 at Khliehriat in East Jaintia Hills district, on Monday, might have been a source of unadulterated merriment. Indeed, even those engaged in the impromptu farming and fishing had something to smile about, but in the true sense, they were mocking the authorities, particularly the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), for their failure to make the crucial highway serviceable. They were part of a large number of protesters who blocked the highway to express their angst and anger at the deplorable condition of the road that is their lifeline; they were there sitting on the road to draw the attention of the powers that be to the urgent need for repairing it and to protest against their repeated failure to fulfill their promise of better days.
Come the monsoon and long stretches of the highway, particularly in East Jaintia Hills district it passes through, turns into a nightmare for users aided by landslides triggered by heavy rainfall; the all-important tunnel at Sonapur is blocked at regular intervals during the period causing traffic to come to a halt; the road’s condition is not only a matter of concern for people of Meghalaya, but even beyond at it connects the state with southern Assam, Mizoram, Tripura and Manipur. So it was that on Monday during the protest, a large number of vehicles in transit had to stop on either side of the sit-in site unable to move for almost the entire day. The groups that participated in the protest spearheaded by the East Jaintia Hills of Khasi Students’ Union even went to the extent of requesting those from outside Meghalaya to not use the road during the night for the next seven days.
The real state of affairs vis a vis roads and highways in the state – and not just NH 6 – can be gauged from the fact that the Meghalaya High Court has had to issue several directives over time to the authorities to get their act together and make these usable, but to no great avail forcing citizens to agitate from time to time. In one of its many observations, the court had stated in one earlier this year that the rains or the monsoon cannot be an excuse since the region is known to be one of the wettest places on earth; the court had directed that the PWD (Roads) attend to potholes that have surfaced as a result of lack of maintenance or because of the rain, including in and around the major towns, particularly Shillong. The court has also passed orders for complete overhaul of the AMPT Road as it is one of the key roads linking the western part of the state to the rest of the state and even other parts of the country. The ball is now very much in the court of both the NHAI and the state government to give the much-needed succour to the people.