Editorial
Dimapur’s worst road and accountability’s road to ruin
On Monday, April 4th, the already-muddied reputation of Monday as a bad hair day found its character embodied in one of urban Dimapur’s most atrocious surface transport facilities: the unofficial ‘worst road in Dimapur’ found itself at the cursing end of commuters and residents of the Dhobinullah-Thahekhu municipality when they woke to find their feet and wheels in ankle-deep mud.
The Dhobinullah-Signal Basti-Thahekhu artery continues to feed the bitterness of the local municipal areas. This atrocious stretch of arrested development – disguised as an urban road no less – is known to perennially shower thick dust on the public during dry seasons. During monsoon, it offers them mud and slush dense enough to sway even trucks off their wheels.
On Monday, one could have ventured even as far as to observe that trucks were drowning in the fresh mud that saturated the road.
Country roads and city dreams
The notoriety of the Dobhinullah-Thahekhu village road seems to have no rival in the developmental discourses of existing transport facilities in the so-called ‘most advanced district’ in Nagaland. For more than a decade, it has been functioning as nothing more than a deliberate eyesore and involuntary heartburn for the approximately 12 villages or wards that populate the bank.
Few people can recollect confidently the last time this infamously ugly stretch of mud, stones and craters – disguised as a road – received repairs. During 2013 or so, it was given what the local residents called the ‘lipstick’ treatment. Note: ‘Lipstick road’ is a sarcastic ‘Naga’ term that has come to describe the superficial, liquid bitumen fillings over potholes that the development departments employ regularly to pacify the public.
This stretch of sadness disguised as a road symbolizes the curious fixture of failed developmental policies of the state administration. Agitations by community organizations, buttressed by copious representations and appeals to the government have come and gone over the years. Some were even proposals for total blockades. Yet, the road remains the same.
The analogy to riverbeds and creeks, as The Morung Express drew in 2015 for the road, remains as relevant as the sarcasm local residents threw on the state government and its development agencies in March 2016.
The newspaper has explained in a report: “From Dobhi Nulla point to Thakekhu village at one end and Signal Angami village on the other, the road which literally resembles a dried riverbed is an everyday nightmare of back-breaking, bumpy and treacherous experience for the hapless commuters and vehicle owners.”
Sarcasm is truth dressed in fancy cloths
And another community, no doubt its resentment having grown from having to endure the prolonged suffering, had finally had enough: community leaders of Dimapur town’s municipal ward-23 finally released their full force of negative goodness on the government and its development departments. It is not normal by measures of institutional decorum for a community organization to unleash their frustration and anger in public in the form of sarcasm – not just sarcasm, but biting, dripping sarcasm. But, this writer must add, it was much-welcomed.
However, the unthinkable happened, that is, a respected community institution unleashing its full resentment in the form of sarcasm. The community leaders of Dimapur town’s municipal ward-23 issued a hilarious statement in early March joking about the state government’s assurance to construct Dimapur’s most infamous, dustiest, most corrugated, most craterous, and the most naked road in Dimapur. The people of ward-23 had had enough when they began explaining their anger in loving English but punctuated by the typical dry, salty-humoured Nagamese:
“It was promised that the said road would be completed by 20th November 2015 using the so-called technology German technology. Baap bare bah. Muja hobo deh!” the committee declared in Nagamese in the statement. The committee, having endured years of dust and potholes, was poking fun at the government for its assurance that the construction would be through ‘German technology’ when the highway hadn’t even seen a patch of bitumen since work began in the autumn of 2015.
The committee remarked: “Ami bah biya tu, German pora nullah khan kini ase niki? Itu piche teh hey kaam suru hobo nishi na ase (Our concern is whether or not drains are being purchased in Germany. It looks like work will begin only after German drains / culverts have been purchased and brought here.).”
The community made it clear that the population living along the highway continue to be profoundly affected by the condition of the road. “We therefore reiterate that we do not want the high profile technologies if (they) cannot be executed. Kote pora itu nullah aru culvert te uthi kehney German dikhi bo (‘How would one be able to see Germany even from standing on the German drains and culverts)?” the press release had stated.
Honest welfare?
As hilarious as it was, the anger of the public cannot be disrespected by deigning it merely an expression that any aggrieved population in democratic societies would make. The anger is genuine, and the grievance profound.
The government must understand that the grievance is genuine, genuine enough to evict both sarcasm and anger as much as it would elicit community initiatives to perhaps do something if not nothing at all. The sentiment was illustrated recently when this month, members of the Kevijau Colony demonstrated their concern for ‘development’ by contributing an amount of Rs. 3 lakh to the Dimapur Municipal Council to repair a stretch of road in the area. It was of no surprise that the stretch of road for which the residents donated funds to invite repairs was part of the Dhobinullah-Thahekhu string.
What the citizens of Dimapur require is not progress in the often-expected embodiment of development or public amenities. What citizens require is accountability and recognition of the citizen’s wellbeing as the benchmark of any sincere government’s role within the larger interplay of welfare and democracy.
The story shares a common plot. What the citizens require is impassioned willingness on the part of the policy-makers and implementing agencies to embrace development as a tool to further the institutional integrity of the very systems good governance represents. And what might be integrity in whichever sense?
Accountability and check on corruption, enforcement of governance, prosecution of erring officials, and redress for the supplications of the citizenry.
Meaning, our policy makers need to undertake a journey of profound soul-searching and examine their place in the lives of the society and her future. That is where true welfare resides.