Editor,
As the school season begins, Shillong is choked with traffic. The ordeal on roads begins from around 7.30 am in the morning. There is a slight respite around midday and soon from around 12.30 till 3 pm in the afternoon the roads are choked with hundreds of vehicles to pick up the wards from various schools and invariably each week day becomes predictably slow, stressed, clumsy and inescapably distressing. Shillong is known for its schools. Some of the most reputed and premium schools have glorious history and earned enviable academic esteem over the years but quite surprisingly most of these schools have no bus service for the students. Many guardians from far flung areas, way beyond the municipal area of Shillong, put their kids in these schools and they are compelled to commute every weekday to the city and back after picking up their wards. This exercise of dropping and picking up children every day is quite taxing and stressful for the guardians as they invest their time and money and also undergo physical exertion. The entire ordeal can be drastically reduced by the schools itself by simply introducing bus services for the students.
In the premium school district of Shillong around Laitumkhrah, Dhankheti, Fire Brigade up to Nongthymmai, Nongmynsong road etc. the Traffic Police is ever engaged in the eternal exercise of inventing new tricks to control traffic through endless permutations and combinations by periodically changing one-ways, no entry points, no parking areas and the like on a rotational basis to finally end up clueless about how to regulate the menace.
Each one of these premier schools have on an average between six hundred to one thousand or more students. Even if fifty percent of students come in their vehicles- four wheeler and two wheelers- each school causes not less than two hundred to five hundred additional vehicles to come on the road on every week day at about the same hour. One can imagine the volume of vehicles that are forced to be on the road for the simple reason that the most prestigious schools are least bothered to introduce efficient bus service for the students which the schools can easily afford to. By not introducing bus services the schools are not only forcing avoidable wastage of resources, time and pressure on public assets like roads; they are also responsible for inflicting the highest possible damage to the delicate environment of the city which is not only detrimental to the ecology but also causing major health hazards on a daily basis. Now the common refrain is that the guardians should take public transport rather than use their private vehicles. In Shillong public transport service is inefficient and mostly in the form of local taxis which are not always feasible because of the high fares. Shared taxis are not easy to find during the rush hour. Besides, working parents mostly make it a single trip to their working places via the schools. In fact, lack of bus services has also affected the work efficiency of working parents in their respective places of work because a significant amount of time, money and energy is taken away by, what is called, ‘school duty’, which has in a way crucially affected the overall productivity of various government and private institutions leading to chronic deficiency in the state GDP.
It is time the administration makes it mandatory for all the premiere schools to introduce dedicated bus services for their students within a specific time period. The state authority should take it up as one of its priority policy initiatives in order to ensure greater efficiency in the state, to protect the environment, ensure minimum wastage of public resources and reduce health hazards. One school bus can reduce not less than forty to fifty vehicles on the road each day. IT IS TIME FOR GOVERNMENT TO ACT.
Yours etc.
Jyotirmoy Prodhani
NEHU, Shillong
Ill -conceived write-up
Editor,
The recent write up by Benjamin Lyngdoh, “The shadow of CAB remains (ST March 27, 2019)is full of misconceived ideas. Among these the one that ought to be dealt with immediately is his allusion to the alleged persecution of Khasi/Pnar Christians in Bangladesh. Wikipedia had furnished facts and figures, but did the writer bother to consult the ground realities before publishing such information? Bangladesh is not far from Meghalaya and let it be known that many visits were made and are being made by church leaders of a particular denomination to look after the well being of the Christian brethren over there. The writer should also be kindly informed that these Khasi/Pnar along with the Bengali Christians have gatherings like Presbyteries, Synods, which are the large congregation of Christians at a particular point of time. Let him also kindly realise that for the last seventy years after independence, the Khasi/Pnars of both countries along with the Bengalis were having market avenues at different places all along the border from Borghat in West Jaintia hills to Dawki in the East Khasi Hills. These markets take place once in eight days as practiced in our hills. There was never a discussion of persecution among these traders. These markets still takes place even today with the new country called Bangladesh. Thus to level such unwarranted charges against that country is not only unfair but would have an unpleasant impact on the cordial relations between two neighbours.
Let us pray that this write-up does not reach the concerned government. In as much as we rubbish the international media in respect of the Balakot airstrike, it is also imperative to disbelieve the other media too. Write-ups in a newspaper read world-wide has tremendous repercussions globally. Let us hope that the matter is hushed up before it is carried any further, otherwise no one knows the inevitable.
Yours etc.,
- Khyriem,
Shillong- 14