By Toki Blah
The agony of the common citizen of Shillong as far as his day to day experience with the prevailing traffic conditions in the city, are increasing day by day. Correspondingly any hope or prospect of these pains lessening in the days to come grow dimmer and dimmer. There are those usual social pessimists who foresee the day when movement of any sort, within Shillong City, whether you have a red light or not; whether you are an uncouth government official who simply bullies his way through traffic or not; in political power or outside political power ; with the assistance of a police rifle or without; these prophets of doom foresee a day when all traffic will come to a standstill. And to truth be told they might not be far off the mark either. When this happens one should not be surprised to see the usual “I told you so” individuals gleefully preening themselves in the middle of a traffic jam. Such is life!
But to get back to the problem of Shillong Traffic, the problem has reached such proportions, that not a single day passes without some comment or the other on the subject in the Letter to the Editor columns of The Shillong Times. Varied suggestions, some pie -in –the- sky and some down-to-earth have been offered for improving the situation. These proposals range from closing of roads for pedestrian use only; the introduction of school buses; to construction of flyovers etc. To give credit to authorities concerned, various regulatory measures too had been tried in the past. They ranged from engaging local durbars in traffic control to the installation of traffic lights. Sadly they failed. The focus of this essay will therefore be mainly be on the reasons for this failure.
Shillong is fast becoming if it has not already become a cosmopolitan city and the concerns expressed about its traffic woes are cosmopolitan – coming from every strata of society. These suggestions however are highly compartmentalized, addressing one or at most two aspects of the problem at a time, not the problem in its entirety. Here to my mind lies the root cause to our inability to come out with a comprehensive solution on Shillong Traffic problem. The problem calls for a comprehensive identification and analysis of the causes before we can come up with a suitable comprehensive plan of action towards problem solution.
The main cause for unruly, disorderly, unmanageable and chaotic traffic conditions in Shillong City spring from the very nature of this Hill Station, its unplanned existence and growth! Its narrow roads remained the same since British times as no one ever cared to foresee the need for their expansion to cater to the traffic requirements of the 21st century. This is called visioning, we didn’t have it and we still don’t have it and the price to pay for this lack of foresight will be the inheritance we bequeath to our children. They will curse us ! And whatever profanity they use then, we deserve in full measure!
There is this story about a leading political figure of the state in the heady days post January 1972, when approached by a visionary technocrat from the PWD on the need to now plan for the expansion of Shillong roads, scoffed at the official, saying that the inevitable shifting of the Assam Capital from Shillong and resulting exodus of the Assamese from this city will make it so desolate that finding a dog in the streets might now be a problem. So much for Urban Planning! Added to this is the failure of the PWD to enforce its rules on distances of private buildings from the centre of the road. Walls of buildings sometimes end where the road begins. Hardly any space has been spared for footpaths or pedestrian amenities. We also find the inexplicable establishment of schools right at the edge of the public road with literally no space for student recreation and with a total disregard for parking space, for vehicles that pick and drop students. Such vehicles now park on the road adding to its already deficient width.
All this because of another misconceived approach that an elected Shillong Municipality is a threat to our indigenous identity. How this can be has never been satisfactorily explained but it has clearly left the city, for the last 50 years, bereft of an elected Urban management body, to look after its welfare. Well we are paying for supporting such unfounded, stupid beliefs and if relief from our traffic sufferings are to be found, we simply have to search our own hearts. Perhaps, just perhaps we might just find answers there.
Then there is the daily ever increase of vehicles on our roads, mostly newly acquired private vehicles. There are some who grumble against this trend and who argue for regulations to curb easy bank loans for cars. Time we accept that times have changed. People, the common people are no longer keen to walk. They feel more comfortable to travel by car however short the distance might be and is a distinct trait of modern urban existence. The trouble here is not the cars they use but the destinations they travel to. Most of these destinations are offices and work places; educational institutions; markets and entertainment areas. Problem is with the rapid increase of population and urbanization and the narrow existing roads and these public utility areas continue to be concentrated in the small congested locations where they had been established ages ago.
Our relief will lie only in our ability to disperse them to new areas. New Shillong is there but only a few Government departments seem interested in shifting there. Others like schools, markets and other recreational institutions continue to concentrate in Old Shillong. This was where MUDA could have played a big role in regulating urbanization between Old and New Shillong. That it has failed is because of the narrow, severely restricted vision of Khasi leadership, both in the Political and Traditional field.Some people with vested political interests started the whole unnecessary controversy between KHADC and MUDA and the Dorbar Shnong that should have known better joined in the chorus of supporting the KHADC. So where are we today? Nowhere! All of us stuck in KHADC incompetence to come up with any meaningful solutions to Shillong’s urban problems and its inability to find answers for Urbanisation in 6th Schedule areas. Well if we continue to wait for KHADC deliverance then we should be prepared to wait for another 50 maybe 100 years more. Those who initiated this uncalled for controversy ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. When public interest is sacrificed for personal political advancement, it is also another form of corruption in public life.
We started off with highlighting the urban pains of the common citizens of Shillong primarily because of the city’s chaotic traffic. We ended up with the sad story of petty unsightly political squabbles trumping over genuine needs of the city and its citizens. The root of it all is control of the financial resources an urbanized Shillong brings in and unless we get out of this, “only I should do it,” syndrome and unless we can think of a paradigm where, “all of us need do it together,” then Shillong shall forever continue to wallow in its own filth and grime.
The need for Shillong activities to relocate to New Shillong cannot be over emphasized. It has become a public necessity. Yet one still hear rumours of malls being planned in Police Bazar in the PWD office at Barik. Its only fools and morons who can’t see the stupidity of such thinking. When one thinks about the person who decides on such silly ventures one can’t help thinking that some village somewhere must really be missing their village idiot! Government, KHADC and the Dorbars of Greater Shillong need to sit together not as rival pirates quarrelling over the spoils of a hapless victim but as family members planning together how to repair the house. We need out- of- the- box thinking; participatory planning together with a united political will to get Shillong out of the quagmire it finds itself in today. Fears of loss of tribal identity; fear of increased Government intervention into 6th Schedule areas; of urban bodies like the Municipality being hijacked by non-tribals, are all fear mongering tactics to allow emotions to rule over reason and logic. They are typical of a political system that has no other vision but to capture power by simply invoking fear. It’s the usual endemic plague of fear that Meghalaya suffers from. Come to think of it it’s really stupid. But stupid it shall remain if we are not prepared to come out of our stupor.