{"id":69197,"date":"2019-06-11T01:15:29","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T19:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/?p=69197"},"modified":"2019-06-11T01:15:29","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T19:45:29","slug":"civil-society-where-art-thou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/2019\/06\/11\/civil-society-where-art-thou\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil society, where art thou?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<strong>Dear Editor,<\/strong><br \/>\nTravelling 113.2 kms via the \u2018legendary\u2019 road from Itanagar to Ziro shook me to the core \u2013 literally.<br \/>\nForget the Itanagar road, the legendary road is drivable till Potin, when it unveils its true rollercoaster self. Monstrous as it is, you can imagine the whole new level it takes when the rain hits the ground.<br \/>\nAnd I, a person suffering from chronic lower back problem, had the \u201ctime of my life\u201d while on the unforgettable journey.<br \/>\nThe legendary road runs till Pangin. I was lucky that my journey ended in Ziro. Blessed be the ones who travel till Pangin! I very much think that the sleeping conscience of the citizens will awaken when the legendary road gets bloody by the \u2018natural\u2019 death of a traveller.<br \/>\nI wondered whom do we share our pain with. The ruling government in the state? No. The PWD minister? Who, come to think of, is the chief minister of our state? We are wise enough to know of the everyday mass corruption and to see right through the fake promises of the politics of appeasement that any authority in power indulges in. Among the many alternatives, what I want to propose &#8211; which I can as a citizen of this state &#8211; is that we unite as a civil society and demand what is fundamentally ours.<br \/>\nAs Joe Biden, former vice president of the United States, rightly points out, \u201cNo fundamental social change occurs merely because the government acts. It\u2019s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand \u2013 demand \u2013 demand change.\u201d<br \/>\nI propose this, as my critics would label it \u2018a utopian alternative\u2019, regardless of the fact that the CM \u2018reviewed\u2019 the status of land acquisition process for the two-lane Potin-Pangin highway, among other things, in the review meeting attended by the PWD commissioner, chief engineers, the DC, and many others, as reported in this daily (\u2018Repair roads, CM tells PWD and TK Engg\u2019, 7 June, 2019).<br \/>\nForgive me for having a trust deficit, for I was born here and have witnessed as a child the saddening dilatoriness with which development proceeds in Arunachal.<br \/>\nA good road is a basic right. The Against Corruption and Unabated Taxation (ACAUT) of Nagaland is an example of people\u2019s movement that we can learn from. I ask you, the reader, all the citizens concerned &#8211; How long till we wait for another enactment? How long till we ourselves act?<br \/>\nI rest my case here.<br \/>\nSincerely,<br \/>\n<strong>Kago Kaku<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Centre for Political Studies,<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Jawaharlal Nehru University,<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>New Delhi<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Editor, Travelling 113.2 kms via the \u2018legendary\u2019 road from Itanagar to Ziro shook me to the core \u2013 literally. Forget the Itanagar road, the legendary road is drivable till Potin, when it unveils its true rollercoaster self. Monstrous as it is, you can imagine the whole new level it takes when the rain hits [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-69197","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-readers-forum"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}