Jammu: Those of the Jammuities who happened to move around the city late nights in recent days must have experienced a unique activity of workmen pruning up the roads, painting dividers and pavements and removing heaps of material accumulated during the past six months due to digging of roads for putting in place various utility services, especially the optic fiber of some private telecom company. It was indeed a brilliant effort to give the city a humane and civilised look.
Equally important were directions issued by the top cop for disciplining traffic in the capital city in view of Durbar Move. The instructions were well taken as the men in blue were found regulating traffic as well, apart from their usual business of filing challans, compounding fines or doing other ‘routine’ things which is common site across the state. For the first time after six months, the commuters and vehicle pliers were pleased to find ‘relaxed squares’ near the colonies inhabited by Durbar Move employees, as the elite-from Sectional Officer or the helpers of the Babus and ministers onwards to Under Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries or the Commissioner Secretaries above had to be given comfortable passage for heading towards their offices and return back to residential sites during the mornings and evenings. During the day, care has also to be taken as some privileged families or domestic help are required to move around in the official vehicles for shopping or errands. So the traffic plan is well in place. Nothing to worry!
Now, if Jammuities wonder about the pace with which the city has transformed so beautiful overnight, nobody in the administration is obliged to explain. The administrators are ‘duty bound’ to make the stay of elite segments comfortable for next six months. That is what they may be meant and paid for. Two hoots for the common Jammuite who braved all irritants-filthy lanes, potholes, accumulated garbage, vandalised roads, choking drains, maddening traffic, non-challant managers, idle parking, encroachments on pavements and what not when Durbar was convalescing in cool environs of Srinagar. This does not happen in Kashmir because of people being relatively conscious of their rights.
Jammu has a tragedy of leadership deficit. Most of those claiming to be leaders are in fact bunch of sycophants who are designed to play second fiddle to their Kashmir centric masters. None of the so-called leaders have ever mustered guts to ask the Divisional Administration why the temple city remains docile for six months and abruptly becomes lively when Durbar is in the town. They do roar at times but the people who matter how hollow they are. These so-called leaders of all hues, who have remained drunk in power for the past six years, now realize all of a sudden about peoples’ power. Now they are descending to their door-steps as servants with meek smile and folded hands and nobody is there to question them where were they for all the past six years? Jammuities are too gentle, sorry to say, to the extent of timidity, which can undergo any sort of ignominy with a sense of pride.
Tailpiece-the ministers, the Super Babus, Babus and their blue eyed boys treat ‘grand privileges’ as a matter of right while in Jammu but they feel apologetic because once in the Valley, as the people there know how to get administration moving.