The 9000 crore project to upgrade Jammu-Srinagar Highway is an urgently needed development work. The pathetic condition of this main duct for traffic in the state goes without saying. The way volume of traffic on this Highway has increased in the last some years is stupefying. Not just extended delays because of traffic jams and slow vehicular movement on this road, but the rise in the rate of accidents is a grating concern for the people of this state. So if the project has been announced and the bids invited it can only have a refreshing effect on those who know it by experience how hard it’s  to drive on this Highway. But there are some snags that have been hit whenever the talk of widening was heard. Some years back when the demolition drive for widening different roads in the valley was unleashed with all possible ferocity, the towns and hamlets falling on this Highway came under the scanner of demolition agencies. This created an atmosphere of tremendous unease among the business communities of these towns. From Uri to Qazigund, all the markets and residential patches on this Highway were to give way to this road; it led to a commotion in the citizenry of these places, who tried to approach different authorities with a list of compensatory demands. Later it was witnessed that no demolition-cum-widening drive was undertaken. After quite some time, what people had thought would be a significant widening work, reduced to some marginal stretching of this Highway. Some feet on either side were collapsed with the metal topped road to make it marginally wide. This of course was not going to help. Instead it created a strange problem. The surface area that was metal topped and included with the road would earlier act as a pavement for pedestrians. Since there are a good number of residential and market places on either side of the Highway, people of these areas were put to great trouble. Second, it accentuated the risk of road mishaps. Since these raw pavements would act as safety margins in case a vehicle took over another in a nasty manner. Once it was included in the road the edges were denuded of that safety margin. These two observations leap to the eye of everyone who walks or drives on this road. In this new Jammu-Srinagar Highway upgradation project the authorities must take these problems into account. Whatever spectacular road engineering plans are to unfold, required amount of common sense should go into it. For if this doesn’t happen problems will persist even if the project is executed in all its details. For this administration has to step in. The residential and business areas that fall along this Highway must be mapped with the authorities already. The civil society and the business associations in these areas can be involved in advance to find out a solution to the ever present problem of authorities pushing for demolition and people crying for compensation. The idea that a town on this Highway can be left untouched by constructing a by-pass through the wet land around may help skirt through the problem easily, but it has some serious repercussions on the historicity and landscape of out towns. These towns on the Highway will suddenly become unknown to the people who ply on this Highway. It’s a serious issue for people who are conscious of how important it is for a historic dwelling to stay in the eyes of the people. Second, it will diminish the vision of the business community so sprawled in these towns about how vast the opportunities of business are. Since from a busy Highway the road passing through these markets will witness a relatively thin trickle of traffic it will psychologically have an adverse impact on the business community. Third, once a by-pass is constructed it will consume a huge chunk of the agricultural land under it. Fourth, there is every likelihood that it will lead to an urban sprawl around the newly built by-pass. So before the work on this project really begins, political leadership, administration, and the civil society should chip in and stop a great disturbance from happening along this Highway.

Lastupdate on : Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:00:00 IST