It is not just this winter that the Srinagar- Jammu highway remained closed. It is almost a routine thing here that a bad weather causes closure of this road. The only thing that causes unusual uproar is an extended closure of the highway. This is what happened this time. But this is the time when the problems at the deeper levels of governance come to the surface. This is the time when we get to know which of the areas have been left unattended. For example this time it got underlined that the the widening of the highway is happening at a very slow pace. Another hard fact is the mismanagement of the traffic movement on the road. The frequent, and dangerous, traffic jams on this road area direct outcome of the inefficiency of the system. Why there is two way movement of traffic, when it is announced that the traffic will be allowed to ply from only one direction. This question need to be seriously taken up by the authorities and the responsibility fixed on this count. But the most traumatising thing for Kashmiris, and all those traveling to Kashmir, is the skyrocketing of the air fares all these days. The normal range of the prices doesn’t show that much fluctuation. But once the roads are closed, it goes up by many notches. This newspaper carried many news stories to bring the point to fore that the air fares between Jammu and Srinagar are going so high that it smacks of share exploitation. The rates are even higher than for some international routes. At a time when the government should have chipped in to make air travel easier and affordable for the passengers, everything is going in a reverse way. When the Kashmir bound passengers are dying to travel back home, and are facing hard time waiting for an occasion to board a bus to Srinagar, air traffic could have eased up the crisis. And this was the time government did something substantial. But this time we found this government is a deep slumber. Neither there was any attempt to arrange some low price air transportation of the stranded passengers, nor were the fares of normal air traffic kept under check.
Sky high prices
