Battered road is shattering the peace of thousands of people of Mayabazar and surrounding areas.

Battered road is shattering the peace of thousands of people of Mayabazar and surrounding areas.

Doctors fear to pass the critical patients through this particular road in the Ambulance with running saline or blood.

The condition of the Road.

Now in the southern part of Durgapur there are a number of large and small scale industries and the prime industry is Durgapur Thermal Power Station which is producing and transmitting power to many core industries in this complex. Moreover now there are a good number of other small scale industries, Bank, Hospital, Post Office in this region.  Centered these industries a number of other miniature projects are doing their business well since years. But the most unfortunate thing is that since decades this area as a whole is getting the step mother like treatment of the administrative authorities. “There is not a stint of development in the field and road and communication particularly in this region and we see that all the development is centered round the City Center area only for the elite class of people live in the post areas” – says the locals unanimously.
 From NH2 Gandhi More Surya Sen  Sarani is the only road to come to this vast industrial area and the road in particular is stretched up to Mayabazar and from there it is getting bifurcated to Gammon Bridge near Durgapur Railway Station in the left and to Durgapur Thermal Power Station in the right. DMC takes the responsibility of a regular maintenance of the road just from Gandhi More to the point of Alloy Steels Plant and the rest portion nearly one and a half kilometer up to Mayabazar Level Crossing seems to be parentless. Nobody cares about its maintenance and supervision. Whenever the question of maintenance arises there arises a passover tendency between the industrial authorities doing their business here and Durgapur Municipal Corporation (DMC) and the condition becomes like ‘bhager maa ganga pai naa’.
Since it is only approach road to touch the NH2, Durgapur Steel City and City Center from dawn to midnight the road remains always busy with traffic snarls. The heavy loaded trucks carrying fly ash from the power station to the coalfield areas, the loaded trucks and trailers carrying heavy materials and plant and equipment for the multifarious industries in this region the School and Staff Buses, Ambulances, Minis Buses, other innumerable private vehicles, Auto Rickshaws in addition to  the countless  number of two wheelers make all the time crammed full  this particular road.
The condition has become so worst that people fear to use the road for their frequent essentialities. School kids and the critical patients are the worst victims. It is seen that almost all the time ambulances carrying critical patients from this vast area to DSP Hospital, Mission Hospital, other Nursing Homes and even to Kolkata and the condition becomes so shocking that  Doctors fear to pass the  critical patients  through this particular road  in the Ambulance with running saline or blood. Sometimes the fluids bulge out of the bottles in the heavy jerking of the pot holes of the battered road. The bone-rattling jerks on this one and a half kilometer of journey between ASP Gate and Mayabazar Level Crossing Gate has become a panic  to the people and triggering frequent accidents and breakdowns of the vehicles.   For passing so many vehicles all the time the whole area remains engulfed with dust with the pollutants and flying particles  of the industries located nearby. Without covering the nostrils with handkerchief or any other piece of cloth  and using specs none can pass through this area.
The stretch is dangerous for the two wheelers which skid regularly in the wedged between the loco tracks and suffer from frequent tube leakages for their regular journey in such a rugged road and they starts to invoke God to make them escape from mechanical damage of the vehicles and breaking their back bones. Some have become a chronic patient of various aches. It gets more deadly during rains when the large potholes remain filled up with muddy water.
Before a few years DMC and DVC jointly repaired the road. But now all are trying to shrugging off their responsibility for the maintenance of this little portion of indispensable road for thousands of people and commuters and school goers. During this political turmoil situation the leaders have also suspended their agitation and keeping mum in this endangered situation and extending their limit of forbearance and the people as a whole have become the only victims.
“Road congestion is another nagging problem for the residents. Unauthorized vendors and hawkers have encroached upon the road side area and thus making the narrow road more congested and accident prone. Taking granted that Railway land is their own land they are using this area as per their own choice. Brick-built buildings are also flourishing in the railway land” - says N. K. Roy, a retired surveyor of a Government concern.
But among all these miseries the most fortunate are the tyre repairing shops along this stretch of dangerous roads that are doing their business well and earning a lot repairing punctures in this precarious situation of this road.


Kanchan Kumar Chatterjee.