Monday Musing
[ Tongam Rina ]
The first spell of heavy rain this year has already claimed four lives after a wall of a house under construction collapsed following a landslide in Itanagar. The city is highly vulnerable to landslides, triggered by unregulated earth-cutting by both private players and the government to pave the way for construction, ignoring all safety warnings.
The cycle repeats each year – deaths, destruction, injuries, announcements of ex gratia, and pages of notices and circulars that even the issuing authorities do not take seriously. Issuing notices and circulars has become a mandatory formality, something to be done out of obligation, though no one follows them – and certainly not the relevant departments or the district administration.
The latest is an order from the Itanagar Capital Region administration, imposing a blanket ban on earth-cutting by all private as well as government agencies with immediate effect, even as the hill town continues to be flattened by such activities.
Why should private individuals follow government orders when the government itself ignores, forgets to implement, or selectively enforces them? A hilly town like Itanagar needs strict regulation of all construction activity. When the earth gives way, it does not recognise owner or neighbour, the powerful or the poor. It simply tumbles, burying people and property without discrimination. Yet weaker income groups suffer more, as they are the ones living in unsafe and vulnerable areas with little to no protection.
Though the rainfall may be less than before as the climate grows more unpredictable, Itanagar remains constantly exposed to the dangers of flashfloods and landslides. A few hours of rain can throw the entire capital into disarray, yet little is being done to minimise the impact. Failure to enforce its own orders only ensures that citizens think nothing of ignoring them.
Dangers and disasters waiting to happen are visible everywhere, as is the corruption. Visitors and residents alike cannot miss it – the lack of pedestrian paths, nonexistent public transport, the shamefully unfinished Nirjuli-Naharlagun road, the congested arterial roads that threaten to collapse with every rain, and the garbage strewn at the entrance of Itanagar and across the township. Even the main highway turns into a stream each time it rains heavily.
How do we break this cycle as we continue to flatten the earth with greed? Citizens are worth more than Rs 4 lakh in ex gratia.
