What would it take for the Government of Meghalaya to rise up to the crises posed by abysmally poor road conditions. The Jowai bypass was in a decrepit shape since 2021 and after loud public protests it was repaired to coincide with the 2023 elections. Hardly six months later the road is in the same pathetic mess. Heavily loaded trucks take a big risk by plying on those roads and so do smaller vehicles that ply alongside these pass heavy vehicles. But the Jowai bypass is just one example. There is the Khliehshnong – Sonapur to Shillong road which can no longer be called a road. It has long lost the character of a road. And now the Shillong-Dawki road looks like it might take a decade to complete, looking at the pace at which it is being constructed. Meanwhile as the NHIDCL is on the job to construct this highway, the condition of the old road from Mylliem onwards up to Dawki has put passengers and drivers at a huge risk. At Mylliem in particular the road has become so bad that trucks topple over with regular frequency. Yet no one complains. MLAs take up the issue of poor road conditions only during the Assembly sessions and forget about them after the session is over. None of the 60 MLAs actually care about the deteriorating road conditions.
A road in Nongmynsong that leads on to Polo Grounds- Mawlai etc., which is hardly a kilometer in length, has taken nearly a year to complete. There is no time-lime for any project in this state and no one bothers to do an RTI to find out the reasons for the inordinate delays in completing any road project. It is a fact that Meghalaya is a state where anyone who can’t find a job in the government sector automatically becomes a government contractor. Such contractors with no experience or expertise in road making but with expertise of taking and giving cuts from the amount allocated for the roads to the PWD minister and engineers, the MLA and other flunkies of the ruling party in the state are given contract works far exceeding their capacity to deliver. The MLAs through whose constituencies the roads pass through are blackmailed to give the road construction and/or repair work to such contractors or they will turn against the MLA in the next elections.
With this sort of handicap in allocation of contract works and with some high level ministers themselves owning construction companies, Meghalaya is seeing a huge downgrade in terms of road quality since 2018. The NHIDCL faces problems in constructing Shillong-Dawki road because every village headman insists that the alignment be changed for flimsy reasons. Hence an alignment that has been certified by geologists and other experts is abandoned under pressure from extraneous groups. It is time for the Meghalaya High Court to step in and stop these arbitrary demands which in turn endanger the lives of commuters on such roads. It is evident that governance in Meghalaya is a huge failure for roads are the measure of a state’s progress and development in the right direction. All other claims are vacuous.
