Do we require additional bridges....?

By Philip Mudartha, Qatar
Bellevision Media Network

Doha, 03 March 2011: I am neither a resident nor a voter in India. I have a job in Qatar, what people back home call a cushy one. Till I have that job, I have this luxury of reading about local issues of Belle and comment about them; if the issue excites me sufficiently.

 

One of the recent interesting debates is the performance or lack of it, of elected representatives of our local body, Belle Grama Panchayat. From what I read, people have great expectations from them. They expect them to work hard. They want them to improve roads and build more of them. They want bridges across the rivers so that the township of  Moodubelle is accessible to villagers from Pamboor, Padubelle, Kabyadi, Dindottu, Kattingeri, Marne and you name them. They want the cleanliness of the township and market place to be maintained. They want them not to party, not to participate in felicitations and not to seek publicity. Tall orders, I must say.

 

Having set the measures by which the local leaders will be evaluated, the tone of the debate often veers round to negativism: that the leaders will not do anything. They are in it for their own selfish reasons. The innuendo is that they will siphon the public funds devolved for rural development from central and state treasuries.

 

This negativism is unhealthy and not good for us because it weakens our democratic institutions. The need is not to destroy our system but to reform it. And that can be done by constructive debates.

 

 

Let us examine the need to build the bridges at Ankudru, Amavasyakalavu and Dindottu. Though I have childhood memories of these locations, I look at these sites on wikimapia and google earth now and then. I cruise over the Papanashini river from Poyyadapadi all the way up to Attinja. These are the two bridges that I use to get to Moodubelle from Pamboor. No doubt my travel distance, cost and time will be cut if bridges across the river at any or all three locations existed, assuming I would be based somewhere near Pamboor School. That is sufficient reason for me to demand the bridges; in fact, people are saying they were hoping these will be built since four decades. But they haven’t because the local leaders do not care.

 

Really? Is that ’that’ simple? What is the payback from these bridges? How will the economy of these villages affected if these bridges are built? What produce will they cart to where using these bridges? Would the increased mobility and connectivity bring outsiders as tourists to these localities and increase revenues? What about the precious farmland lost to the feeder roads? How would the private owners will be compensated?

 

The only rationale for these bridges to nowhere is that these villagers have to reach the administrative centre situated at Moodubelle faster and at lowest travel cost. Are bridges the only viable solution?

 

Can we look at alternative solution? How about restructuring the Grama Panchayat? How about bifurcating Belle Grama along the course of the river? Between Shirva, Kurkal and Pangla, I make a case to assign a Grama Panchayat to Pamboor. The epicentre of this new administrative unit is the triangular region around BC Rd, Padubelle and Pamboor with Sri Guru Narayan High School serving as the ’downtown’ (or town hall site). There are paved or unpaved motorways leading to every hamlet within the localities, who need these bridges, to access the new administrative centre. Certainly the cost to house a new Grama Panchayat is a fraction of these bridges.

 

Any takers?