Former IAS officer Toki Blah has said that the reason for extreme traffic chaos in Greater Shillong is a lack of planning.
“One hundred years back, the roads in Shillong were quite small but, after we got the hill state, there has been no planning on how the city should function and Shillong city keeps expanding on its own without any proper planning,” he told Highland Post.
Proper urban planning would first see roads built, water and electricity supply laid down before houses are built but this is the exact opposite of the way things work in Shillong’s outskirts, Blah said.
Stating that the state capital has become a hotspot of contradictions, he said that roads in Shillong are too narrow and cannot be expanded, yet vehicles keep being added to the already squeezed streets day by day.
The former official said that there is a need for stringent traffic rules and that civic infrastructure should be under a municipality.
In the absence of an elected municipal body, funds from the Centre do not come to the state for the various civic infrastructures. “If we have an elected municipality we can bring a thousand crores for development,” he added.
Blah even said that, with modern technology, the time has come for the government to think about underground roads.
