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| Myriad causes of massacres on roads | | |
Salman Nizami
Jammu, March 13: The government claims that not more than 100 people were killed in the militancy related incidents across the state in 2008 but more than twice as that lost their lives to road accidents. The number of those injured on the roads runs well beyond 5000 which clearly underlines that there is an unintended massacre of innocent civilians on the roads. The responsibility is not only the killer roads but there are many mafias responsible for this senseless loss of human lives.
As Jammu regions tops in the number of road accidents, the hilly areas including Doda, Kishtwar,lo; Bhaderwah, Ramban, Banihal have probably witnessed the largest number of causalities .In the real sense of the word they have earned the epithet of the “ Killer Roads”.
The causes are many but all peak of total apathy, gross negligence, and utter insensitivity to loss of human life by the concerned authorities. The first culprit causing these tragic accidents are the motor vehicles used for public transportation. Most of these have outlived their utility and there is absolutely no physical check on the fitness of these vehicles. Most of the checks are done on papers at the time of renewal of yearly tokens. In a number of cases the accidents have occurred due to failure of breaks or steering mechanism. Not only are these vehicles a direct hazard for human life but are also indirectly the greatest sources of pollution. The supreme court of India save Delhi by taking all the old diesel buses off the road. why can’t we have a similar arrangement here by having all the vehicles more than 15 years old taken off the road? The regional authorities clearing these vehicles are the epitomes of corruption .One can get a certificate even without showing the vehicle to the concerned person. It may even be delivered to one’s home. There is no hold on the issue of route permits. No one is bothered about the carrying capacity of our roads. Most of new public transport vehicles are issued permits for operation in the cities of Jammu and Srinagar. Condemned vehicles are plied on rural routes. Added to this menace of unfit vehicles are the untrained and quite often inebriated drivers.
The traffic police which are supposed to enforce all these basic requirements for safe driving are a disgrace on the police itself. There is no other organisation in the entire state as corrupt as the traffic police. It would be batter for the government to outsource the enforcement of traffic regulations to some private agency. While traveling towards Sringar from Jammu or Jammu to Doda one can see a number of Traffic Police Nakkas and trucks, buses, passenger vehicles were forcibly stopped in order to collect money from them as hundreds of crores invested in traffic vanish like the “matter” going into an astronomical black hole.
After all these roads are killing more people than the militants do. It has been observed that the security forces are better able to monitor , control, and enforce movement of all vehicles as and when they require doing so for their own benefit. Will the young Chief Minister, presently on the move, ponder about this and try to end this “Road Rage” in the state. It will save many innocent lives
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