The death of a 21-year- old on New Year’s Day by falling into a ditch is only the tip of the ice-berg of what roads portend today. While some may argue that there are other reasons why the accident may have occurred and this is not the space to get into that, the fact remains that roads have acquired meanings never fathomed before.
At one time, roads were perceived as something required to facilitate access – to schools, to the local market, to the health facility. These are still the reasons why people by and large require roads even today, and which still remain unaddressed in many areas.
We used to hear of deprivation of access through existing roads for people who belonged to the Scheduled Caste communities, and no one cared about this issue, because it didn’t concern the dominant communities. However, while these sorts of concerns persist and do not enter the mainstream discussion, the word road seems to have acquired even more connotations for the State now. Today roads are equated with deaths, safety deprivation, transportation of coal, preliminary for concretisation, macro projects, facility of transportation for big business, means to run down a political opponent or dissident and decimate his/her/their land.
Already as this goes to the press, nine lives are reported to have been lost in accidents from the start of 2024 itself. For the accident on 1st January, the immediate reaction that we have is to question the Smart City Project. While this is needed, we stop at that, and do not pursue the larger issues that this entails. Therefore there are avoidable accidents recur.
If there was no signage, what are we doing to address this issue? How is the enforcement mechanism working in so far as absence of requisite signage is concerned? Not just in this case, but other cases where the non erection of signage hasn’t resulted in death. Should the accountability be from the contractors alone? Should not those who are responsible for not enforcing the law not be held accountable?
Further, Smart City is itself an anomaly. It is a separate entity that takes away decision making from the people, through an entity called the Special Purpose Vehicle. Apart from this neither the CCP nor the Municipalities have implemented the 74th amendment to the Constitution of India, where the issues of the people in the city can be discussed by the city’s resident voters.
Apart from the killer connotation of roads, is the connotation of roads being unsafe. Women are complaining of being molested on roads if found travelling at late hours, and it has even been stated that an attempt to complain at the police station has met with lukewarm response.
Then there is the massive network of highways – another category of roads, and these have come about not for the facility of the traveller, but for the facility of transportation of coal from the port to Verna (that we failed to see, when the authorities made out that Baina is being cleared of prostitution, when it was about paving the way for roads) and to Karnataka for the plants. Also Goa has two airports that it hardly needs, but the highway has also been designed for the Mopa airport, oops, aerotropolis, at Mopa. All these roads happen in the name of ‘development. But rarely the question of roads for whom and at whose cost pops up.
Proposals for broad roads in plans are naturally looked at with suspicion, because it signals conversion of fields and orchards into concrete jungles. Construction regulations require these broad roads, so these roads are planned hand in glove with the corporates who wish to carry out this conversion.
When it is about choosing the exact route of the roads, the design is arbitrary and the loss of land of those who do not matter to the establishment, is taken as a given, all in the name of ‘development’. One remembers that five-star hotels were being built close to the beach within the CRZ areas, and the argument being advanced was that the tourist wants direct access to the beach as in just out of the hotel and onto the beach.
Alternatively, the projects are passed, pretending that there are wide roads, and then a case is sought to be made out that for the safety of the residents of those building projects, the roads need wide access, and then it is a vicious circle.
Therefore, it is time that we journeyed beyond the single immediate case that we see, which pertains to our relative or friend, or someone who is popular, and get to the bottom of what development is all about, for which roads including highways are today the foundations. We must hold those responsible accountable. But we must go beyond to hold those in governance responsible for not doing their due diligence. We must also hold the State responsible for a development, where killer, unsafe, field destroying roads are a norm. And this again can only happen if we have a vibrant democracy, where people can articulate their concerns and are not threatened with incarceration for speaking up or for organizing people and empowering them to speak up.
With this kind of blinkered vision of roads, one can be sure that the benefits of such roads for the people at large are seldom weighed. In the context of Goa, this acquires alarming dimensions considering Goa’s limited land area of 3702 square kilometers, of which there is a substantial forest cover. People have been displaced from their dwellings and their livelihoods on account of these roads. People have died on account of lack of accountability in terms of the construction of roads.
(Albertina Almeida is a lawyer and human rights activist)
