Change is inevitable. It is the law of nature. Everything around us changes with every passing minute. We notice some and we forget few. A couple of months ago Siliguri went through such kind of change and is still going through it. How can we forget the hour long traffic on the way from Bagdogra to Darjeeling More? The horn of the cars honking and creating more noise in a bright sunny day. The fuss was all about the process of ‘development’ that was undertaken by the government. The name of the development project is Asian Highway 2 (AH2). If we see the map of the Asain Highway 2 we can see that the road runs from Denpasar, Indonesia to Merak and Singapore to Khosravi, Iran and covers a total area of 13,177 kilometers.
I had gone to my house in Darjeeling for few days and when I returned back to siliguri I could not recognize the road with whom I was familiar since last couple of years. The greenery was all lost, the small shops near the road was uplifted making the road look barren and dead. With the slogans of development we have been harming our lives, our environment, and our society at large. We human have started becoming a threat to ourselves.
Later, the news came that the road side vendors were given some amount as concession from the government. But was that money enough for them? These people have been working in these areas since ages. Paying them a meager sum for throwing them out of their job is this correct in any sense? The power holders have been doing these things since ages and still they do not stop. So for whom this development is in a true sense? Didn’t the same kind of incident happened with the tea garden workers of Chanmuni Tea estate? To build the township and fancy shopping mall several hundred tea garden workers became jobless. 2 workers lost their lives in safe guarding their rights. Why development does have to happen threatening the lives of the marginal sections of the society? Don’t you think that the development should be for all? Don’t you think this is injustice to the larger whole?
And still while passing through the Asian Highway 2 I question myself “Where did they go”?
