By Hugh & Colleen Gantzer
Last week a section of Mussoorie’s main road, the Mall, collapsed, sending a Dumper Truck plunging to the road below and killing its driver. In spite of the horrific nature of this tragedy, we sense a muffling silence from our netas and babus. Why? But much worse was to come as we probed deeper and deeper into this ghastly affair.
However before we proceed you need to know more about the background of this tragic matter.
Mussoorie’s Mall was laid down by the British 200 years ago. At that time it was designed to take rickshaws, horses and pedestrians. Then as our holiday hamlet grew into a municipal town, parts of the Mall had to be widened without destroying the houses, hotels and shops which had been built on the rising hill sides bordering the Mall.
The Brits decided to widen a stretch of the Mall by building cantilevers. These are metal beams that stretch out horizontally, but are anchored only at one end like an arm stretching sideways from the body. You can stretch your arm out from your body only if the muscles of your shoulder and upper arm are strong enough. Similarly, the iron beams that formed the main part of the cantilever had to have its support of cables, etc. Over this tough support infrastructure was laid the concrete or other surface materials of the road. At first the road was surfaced with grey gravel, called bajri, resurfaced with tar, then cement. Then it was all dug up again and all sorts of “improvements’ were done to allow motor vehicles to ply. Now, the same old road built originally for light traffic had to bear the load of multiple layers of heavier resurfacing plus that of the motor vehicles, without enhancing the supports of its cantilevers.
But still the century old cantilever made for rickshaws, horses and pedestrians held. Now, to cut a long and very sad story short, we shall fast forward to today.
Consider the long-suffering cantilever. It was designed for a pre-motor vehicle era. It did not creak or complain or crack when load after additional load was heaped on it. But now came the final load, the legendary straw that broke the camel’s back. The great Powers That Be who decide our civil destinies pontificated that the Mall needed to be re-structured. They, presumably knew that the pipes and cables carrying our essential services also lay under the Mall but they seem to have kept that information secret when they awarded contracts for the latest re-surfacing of the thoroughfare.
We shall say nothing about how contracts are awarded or who profits by them. But this contract went on and on and on. So, suddenly, the panic button was pressed, road workers were ordered to work at night with all the attendant dangers associated with such short cuts including the use of heavy earth-moving JCB equipment. The term JCB stands for Joseph Cyril Bamford Excavators Limited and, to the layman, JCB equipment resembles heavy jawed mechanical rhinos. The people who were responsible for redesigning the Mall, presumably, also decided to build a manhole on the shop-side of the road just opposite the cantilever section. When they began to work on the inner side of the Mall, they also would have scooped large amounts of the cables and wires which supported the metal framework of the cantilevers on which the outer edge of the Mall rested.
Now came the last step which was the very edge of the yawning tragedy. The Mall reconstruction team decided that they had to remove the rubble and debris on the Mall as fast as possible. They called in heavy mechanical dumpers. When one such vehicle was maneuvering its way down the Mall it was forced to avoid the manhole on the shop side of the Mall and creep on the cantilever side. But this fragile edge had already been weakened by the JCB tearing out its entrails of supporting wires and cables. The old, weakened, stretch of road collapsed after multiple decades and it fell taking the dumper and its driver with it.
This then is what could have happened. We need an expert committee to discover the truth, if any, beyond our logical explanation as tax payers, voters and stake holders.
(Hugh & Colleen Gantzer hold the National Lifetime Achievement Award for Tourism among other National and International awards. Their credits include over 52 halfhour documentaries on national TV under their joint names, 26 published books in 6 genres, and over 1,500 first-person articles, about every Indian state, UT and 34 other countries. Hugh was a Commander in the Indian Navy and the Judge Advocate, Southern Naval Command. Colleen is the only travel writer who was a member of the Travel Agents Association of India.)
