Ridden with routine crises the state of J&K is nowfacing difficult times in many respects. This has been true for last many yearsnow. This has done one huge damage to the very basics of governance. And thishas led to ignoring the long term development.
A cursory look at how the place is developing, and how the infrastructure is raised, would make this point amply clear. A general disregard for what we require in a long term basis has made us vulnerable in more than one way. Now take the example of traffic management.
It would be wrong to say that the departments assigned with the task of maintaining and upgrading our roads, and those who look after the traffic are sitting idle. Nothing would be farther from truth.
The people at the helm, particularly the filed staff, are doing their bit. They must be given credit for this, but this is only one side of the picture. What we miss is a long term thinking and a matching action on the ground.
What would be the status of our roads 10 or 20 years down the line, and what would be the challenges to manage it then; none seems to think this way, not to speak of working out a plan accordingly.
This results in our problems piling up despite thedepartments trying hard to manage it all smoothly. It would be a good idea tostudy any city that matches Srinagar, or Jammu, in population profile, roadnetwork, business activity, and the cartography of the commercial, residentialand government infrastructure.
Making a scientific study of such a city in some developed country, and then applying it to our long tern problems can contribute a lot in making our future planning workable and efficient.
Otherwise the ad hoc measures taken are not going to address the problems in future. Similarly there are other sectors of development and governance where such comparative studies can immensely help in drawing a long tern plan and then working accordingly.