First of all I am full of admiration for the traffic police of Shillong. Their perseverance and patience is something worth mentioning. How diligently they stand at their specified posts in order to control the daily insurmountable traffic which in fact keeps increasing with every passing day. How patiently they keep repeating the boring task of placing and removing road dividers and no parking kiosks all over the city. It is not an easy task to keep blowing the whistle and keep waving your hands throughout the day. With the indisciplined kind of drivers we have in the city, the task is rendered more challenging. Kudos to our traffic police and indeed they deserve a pat on the back.
However, the question is: how long will our traffic police continue with this hapless task? They are also human beings with the possibility of reaching their patience limit. In the present situation, there is a real traffic impasse in Shillong. Our traffic police are functioning ad experimentum for we see them trying out every possible combination in the traffic puzzle. Unlike any other puzzle which has a solution on repeated trials, the traffic puzzle of our city does not seem to have any solution at all. Changing routes, putting and removing no parking kiosks every now and then many times only confuses the drivers. We cannot blame these civil servants for they are only trying their best to ease the congestion.
The other day, it took me two and a half hours to reach Third Mile, Upper Shillong from Civil Hospital. Is it not a crime to waste so many precious hours of our citizens? A distance of ten minutes taking two to three hours means that two hours are a real waste. Multiply this with just 1oo travelers and it is a waste of 200 hours of working time. No wonder our State does not progress because we have no sense of the value of time.
Very often we keep asking, whether our leaders are blind to this reality. How can they be at peace when they are aware of such deplorable situations? I implore upon our political leaders who are at the helm of affairs today to sympathize with our traffic police who are beset with tension whenever they step into the roads. The only solution lies in the hands of the government. Traffic snarls take place generally at big junctions like at Umshyrpi, Polo Bazaar, Dhankheti, Mawlai Iewrynghep, Khyndailad, Barik Point and also Itshyrwat, two years from now. In all the above junctions, flyovers could easily be constructed. We have all witnessed how the recent flyovers in Guwahati city have solved much of the traffic congestion in that city. We from Shillong cannot but feel envious of the flyover networks seen in other cities of our country. The only flyover we have in our State is ironically the one built by the NHAI at Barapani which of course does not serve our purpose.
We have heard of talks and debates on this issue at every level of society, but they have just remained empty talks. Government after government has wooed the public with false promises on this issue. So far nothing concrete has been done. All our governments so far lack far-sightedness and vision. Take for example, the present road project from Itshyrwat to Mawpdang is only a two-lane highway. Five years from now, this particular region would become an extended part of the city and would be buzzing with life and economic activities. Traffic is going to increase by a huge volume as it is being seen already. This project should have been a four-lane project keeping in mind the future growth of the area. Unfortunately, our government does not learn from experience and we will be caught up again and again in the same mess. Now it would have been easier for the government to acquire land for the four-lane project as not many buildings have come up. A few years from now, the government would have to pay through the nose to get an inch of land. It is true that the State is going through a financial crunch, but it takes good leadership to negotiate with the central government to get fund allocations for road projects and in this perhaps the State has failed miserably.
In conclusion I would emphasize the fact that our traffic police are at their wits end to solve the on-going traffic impasse and so we need to turn to a permanent solution. As of today, the only solution available is to go back to the lockdown period. We the Shillongites would like to have the joy of seeing flyovers coming up in our city in the coming few years. That would be the permanent solution to our traffic headache. It is good to remind ourselves here that development comes with fast communication and fast transport. In Meghalaya we lack both of these and so we little wonder why our State is left behind in the race for development. Everyone knows that roads, railways and airways are a secret to economic prosperity. Countries which excel in these like China in these past few years have progressed by leaps and bounds. In Meghalaya roads are our principal means of communication and so they should have been in topmost conditions. Because our rural road networks are miserable, tourism has remained stagnant and that means a great loss of State GDP. As someone has rightly said “you can judge the prosperity of a country by its road system.” Our State which is going to celebrate 50 years of its birth, need to harness all its energy and muster all its wits in order to get on the road of progress. For this public infrastructure like roads, electricity, water supply etc., need to be tremendously improved.
