Rising roads, sinking homes! |
In Jammu and Kashmir today, a quiet but dangerous transformation is underway. Roads are rising year after year, and homes, other buildings, and shops along them are slowly sinking, not physically collapsing, but being pushed below street level by repeated, unscientific construction. What was once a minor inconvenience has now turned into a structural injustice. Doorsteps have become pits, courtyards collect rainwater, and entire neighborhoods now live below the road line. This is not a natural disaster. It is an administrative one. Twenty years ago, many shops in my locality stood nearly three feet above the road level; today, those same shops are at, or even below, the road surface. The roads & buildings (R&B) department must own this mess.
Drive through any town in the Valley or Jammu plains and the pattern is unmistakable. Fresh blacktop gleams on the surface, but beneath it lie layers of neglect. Instead of removing the old, damaged asphalt, a new layer is simply laid over it. This happens again and again, every season, every year, until the road rises inches above its original level. What should have been a repair becomes an accumulation. What should have been engineering becomes cosmetic layering. The consequences are not abstract. They are lived every day.
Thousands of homes that were once above road surface level are now lower by one or even two feet. Rainwater flows from the elevated road straight into living rooms. Shop fronts lose visibility and access. Elderly residents struggle to step down into their own homes. Drainage channels, already poorly designed, become useless as their levels no longer match the road. In many places, people are forced to rebuild entrances, raise floors, or abandon spaces........