Sikkim’s Vulnerable and Vital Roads

By HEATHER TIMMONS AND SRUTHI GOTTIPATI
SOURCE: nytimes
National Highway 31-A, connecting West Bengal with Sikkim, blocked due to a landslide in July 2011.The very remoteness that makes the misty, mountain-locked Indian state of Sikkim a growing draw for tourists has made it difficult to provide relief to victims of the earthquake this Sunday, which has claimed at least 22 lives in the state so far.

Highway 31, which climbs and falls from Bihar to Assam through the area’s mountains and valleys, is the main transportation artery connecting the northeast with the rest of India. Natural disasters like the floods in September 2008 routinely cut this already culturally and economically isolated region from the rest of India. The highway’s very necessity also makes it a popular target of protest groups.
Serpentine Highway 31-A, the offshoot that leads to Gangtok, Sikkim’s capital, follows the Teesta River, sometimes as a single-lane road hugging a hillside. In recent years, a growing number of trucks full of construction materials, the offshoot of a building boom in Sikkim, traverse the highway, and it has been a regular target for protestors who want to establish an independent state in India called Gorkhaland.

On Monday morning, teams of emergency personnel were waiting in West Bengal, in the city of Bagdogra, four hours away from the Sikkim capital of Gangtok, because the roads were impassable. A clear estimate wasn’t available about the state of the roads, the state government said then, but one road official had counted 16 landslides in a stretch of about 6 miles.

By Monday afternoon, the Ministry of Home Affairs reported there had been landslides in “over 21 places” on Highway 31-A, but said the road was open for traffic to Gangtok by 4:00 P.M. The road that leads north from Gangtok to Nathula showed “severe damage,” with 12 landslides in the first 21 kilometers (about 10 miles) and the North Sikkim Highway suffered 16 landslides, the ministry said.

Local and national government and foreign development agencies, including the Asian Development Bank, have regularly noted that the northeast’s citizens are at the mercy of unreliable roads, and millions of dollars in road improvement projects are underway in the area.

One such project, which plans to widen Highway 31-A into two lanes, may have had the unintentional impact of making the area even more cut-off after the earthquake, citizens say.

‘‘There are big earth-moving equipment, which are continuously working at various places along the road,’’ said Praful Rao, a former wing commander with the Indian Air Force who now runs a Darjeeling-based not-for-profit dedicated to preventing landslides. ‘‘Where many landslides are taking place is where the work has not been completed.’’

While a natural disaster like an earthquake can’t be planned for, Mr. Rao said that completing more of the highway work outside of the monsoon season would have helped. ‘‘Firstly, you take advantage of the dry season. It is not a time to relax,’’ he said.

The earthquake lasted for just 20 seconds or so, he noted, but if it was a minute or longer ‘‘we would have had casualties on an immense scale,’’ he said.