Life in Imphal is delayed by one hour every day. Such is the traffic problem in Imphal city these days that one precious hour of a day is being eat-away, every day at the traffic lane. It will probably produce slowness in the overall productivity of our economy. It’s naturally affecting our economy.
We can easily calculate, the amount f time we spend in traffic lane during a period of a month, a year, a decade and even in one’s life time.
On a lighter vein if we keep on spending one hour every day in traffic, by that calculation, in a year we spend 360 hours, that’s 15 days time in a year. In 10 years, 150 days and in fifty years, we are spending a mind blogging 1500 days clinging to the traffic signal post!
It is serious matter from the health perspective also. All short of dirt, dust and smoke are entering our body. We have to spend money for the diseases and health concerns, these pollutant causes. it is making our society an unhealthy society. If we can calculate or have some short of survey of some kind about the health consequences, the traffic problems are creating; it will be an eye opener.
Some of the causes of traffic problem in Imphal city may be, narrow street and roads, unplanned construction of roads, bridges and building, lack of proper training traffic police personals, etc. Etc. Frequent dunging up of roads for sewage projects and other purposes are only creating extra problems.
By very passing day, the problem is degrading. By now people exhausted and don’t know whom to complain. The state government traffic machinery is not working at the moment.
At times many strange things do happen. The traffic police and other security personals are engaged in a kind of hanky-panky with the roads side vegetables other stuff sellers. The moment, the security personals are out of the sight those vegetable sellers and other roads side vendors will start selling their stuffs, then the security personals will arrive and they will started running hither- thither, spilling their vegetables and eateries everywhere. This is the story every day.
But if one ask one of those road side vegetable sellers, as one such Ema answers, their livelihood depends upon it and they need placement to sell their vegetables and other stuffs.
The so called over-bridge that we are having was once built hoping to solve the traffic problems. On the other hand, it is creating more problems, and this structure is making the city congested, if it is so then why? Don’t we have proper planning about this structure, before started building it? Or the whole concept of this over bridge solving the traffic related problem is altogether wrong? Needs pondering!
So how can we solve these traffic related problems in Imphal city? Some suggestions can be, proper planning before constructing roads, bridges, and other structure, dislocation of some of the buildings located in the city.
The shifting of the state Assembly house is fairly welcoming. If some other structures can be shifted in other suitable place and use vacated slots for parking and other purposes, it can also be helpful to some extent.
A properly planned Imphal city will be a big dream to be realized in future, if such a thing is possible in so late a time. The hope is we will have visionary leaders someday who have the motivation, will and the most importantly resources to realized such a dream.
The number of vehicles in the state are increasing at a fast pace and it can only be expected to increase manifold in future. The population is increasing in the state and so is the economic activities are also increasing. The migration from rural areas to urban areas is also increasing in search of livelihood and other matters. So the so called traffic problems can turn into one exploding problem in future. Serious planning and implementation is required in this matter otherwise situation is moving out of the control.
