By Manoj Pande
Digboi.
Oil City of Assam. Where in 1866, the first oil well was dug in India. Popular folklore has it that the Canadian engineer WL Lake exhorted his men – “Dig Boy Dig”, as they accidentally discovered crude oil. And Digboi got its name.
Cut to the 21st Century.
Our very own town – Dehradun. No oil underneath – crude or otherwise. Yet…. dig, boy, dig!
Digging goes on everywhere. And it is not today’s phenomenon either. As goes the adage ‘leaving no stone unturned’, they are at it in full force. And pray, who are ‘they’? It is the triumvirate busy laying new sewer lines, gas pipelines or underground cables.
Rare would be a road that has been left untouched. Recklessly and mercilessly digging up and destroying roads and the (rare) footpath in this haphazardly burgeoning city, leaving mounds of earth and rubble for the commuters to negotiate en route.
Decades later if any historian chooses to do research on the planning (???) in the third decade of 21st Century Dehradun, a three-letter acronym would find pride of place. JCB!
Increasingly the most potent and visible sign of state power, the JCB can be seen everywhere. A yellow coloured vehicle like no other. Huge wheels and octopus like arms at its front as well as rear. They can drill, bore, break structures and throw away the soil and the rubble any which way they choose.
Nobody knows what the letters stand for, but everybody is aware what a ‘JCB’ can do. The word ‘bulldozer’ is passe, now it is the JCB that we all know. To whet my curiosity, I googled and learnt that it stands for Joseph Cyril Bamford Excavators Ltd, a company in the UK.
The arrival of this yellow machine is the first sign that something is about to happen in the area. Unmoving and benign, it stands somewhere on the side of the road for a day or two. Yet its mere presence is ominous.
And then it starts. One day, early in the morning groups of workers arrive. An operator climbs up and enters the glass cabin of the JCB, closes the door, sits down and glances around from his exalted perch, a couple of feet above the ground. Revving up its engine, the JCB begins moving and commences its activity.
Depending on what he chooses to do, the machine can become a scooper, a driller or a destruction machine. Scraping the bitumen off, if it’s a road. Drilling through, if concrete and simply ploughing through, if it is mere soil. It does not matter if it is a throughfare, link road or a colony road. They just do it. A job is a job, but a specialised one that not everyone can perform.
By lunchtime, ditches come up. Some deep, some not. Mounds of excavated earth and rubble now begin occupying parts of the road. Meanwhile, some tractor trailers (another common feature of this city) bring materials and dump them wherever there is space. There will be more of all the above – the ditches, the rubble and the materials as the days go on. Work is truly ‘in progress’.
The ‘material’ could be bricks, crushed stones, concrete pipes, cables or metal pipes, or anything else, depending upon to which of the triumvirate the work pertains. Curious residents and exasperated commuters watch the unfolding activity. Sometimes, a day or two later some boards/dividers are placed informing about the ‘work in progress’ and that ‘inconvenience is regretted’. But with wheels underneath them, they too keep moving as the ‘dig, boy, dig’ activity carries on in a new location each day. The shabbily covered area left behind remains though. A testimony to the quality of execution and of course, care for the inhabitants.
I wonder if the contractual conditions included restoring the dug-up area to its original shape. If they did, most of our roads today would not have been in the state that they are. Space for vehicular movement has narrowed down with rubble occupying the excavated and poorly filled portions.
One can lament, laugh or learn to live with it. I have chosen the third alternative.
This is what most of the city inhabitants have done too. But every suffering has a silver lining also. The rough and reckless traffic on the roads of Dehradun is now checked to some extent. Their speeds retarded, the riders have to negotiate through mounds and craters, one hand or foot on the clutch, swerving and avoiding the rider ahead, who is well on his way doing the same for the fellow in front of him. So what if there is greater cacophony on the roads? A snarl or quarrel once in a while? And please do also spare a thought for the poor pedestrian walking on the freshly created undulating landscape balancing himself or herself. And the school children, too, with their heavy school bags.
When I came to this city a couple of years ago, similar upheaval was being attributed to the ‘Smart City’ project. Presumably the city is now smart because nobody talks about it anymore. A truncated, concretised and almost treeless Parade Ground is there for everyone to see. Nothing else needs to be said.
It is now the turn of others to take on from here. Thankfully, unlike the earlier endeavour, healthy trees are not being killed this time. And maybe the road roller will arrive on the scene soon, repairing and restoring the damaged roads and bringing back the ‘acche din’. But time is ticking away. Monsoons are not far off.
(A former Railway Officer, Manoj Pande now lives in Dehradun.)
