Where rains play havoc with road link

The road length from Tezpur — Army’s Four Corps headquarters — to Tawang on the Chinese border is around 530 km. But, given the terrain and the vagaries of nature, it may take anywhere between 12 to 24 hours to cover this distance. And if there is a heavy shower or snowfall, then the road, which is strategically so important from military point of view, might remain closed for up to even three weeks at a stretch. Road connectivity in Arunachal Pradesh, a state that shares about 800 km of international boundary with China, is not in a good shape. Besides four months of heavy rainfall, almost four months of snowfall in most of the upper regions here make travelling by road is risky business.

This year, for instance, while heavy snowfall cut off several districts, including Tawang, for weeks, the ongoing monsoon has severed road links to almost every district. The Seppa-Sagalee road, which had remained cut off the whole of June, was severed again last week, while the Tezpur-Tawang road link has been snapped at least a dozen times in the past three months. Landslides — a common phenomenon in the loose soil of the Eastern Himalayas — have badly affected the capital town of Itanagar and the adjoining town Naharlagun, with at least 40 people getting killed in two months.

According to state Public Works Department Minister Nabam Tuki, at least 60 bridges, big and small, have been either washed away or damaged in the current monsoon. “In most cases, the approaches to the bridges and culverts have been washed away, and the total damage to roads and bridges under the PWD till now would be nothing less than Rs 300 crore,” said Tuki, recalling his footmarch, stretching over three days, to reach the state capital from his village near Sagalee last week.

The state Government has in the meantime prepared a 60-page report on the damage caused to roads and bridges by landslides and flashfloods in the current year. “The Chief Minister is sending this report to the Centre and seeking assistance to get the repair work done,” Tuki said.

Arunachal Pradesh had only in January this year got an announcement from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for construction of a 1,840-km two-lane Trans-Arunachal Highway that would cost roughly about Rs 6,000 crore. The proposed highway is supposed to run from Tawang in the west to Khonsa in the east, touching every district of the largest state in the region. The PMGSY, too, has helped Arunachal Pradesh construct 838 km of roads in 2007-08, while 62 new roads, connecting as many villages to the main arterial roads, are also under construction, Tuki pointed out.

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