Ranchi: For 42-year-old Raghav Kumar, a marketing executive, it was just another workday last Friday. The only problem was that the regular road, which he often took to the office, forced him into an unfamiliar situation. An overnight pothole near Chiroundi Chowk — resulting from a pipeline repair work- left a crater on the road, toppling him with his bike while negotiating the stretch, leading to a grievous fall. He is currently recuperating from a leg fracture.But not all are as lucky as Kumar to have survived a near-fatal accident. According to a recent report in Lok Sabha, accidents due to potholes on the roads have killed a whopping 260 people in Jharkhand out of 384 accidents between 2020-2024. During this same period, a total of 266 people suffered injuries, of which 203 were grievous in nature.Nationally, 9,438 fatalities were reported out of 23,056 accidents during the same period. Of the 19,956 injured in total, 9,670 were grievous in nature, a reply by the ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) said in response to a question by Lok Sabha MP Raja Ram Singh.Rishab Anand, the founder of Rise Up, which works for road safety in Jharkhand, maintained that many cases often go unreported.“The number of accidents involving potholes could be much more, at least if one talks in the context of Jharkhand, but such incidents aren’t often accurately reported due to various reasons. Pothole-related deaths or injuries are mostly man-made due to civic mismanagement and negligence in road engineering and maintenance,” he said.In Ranchi alone, craters, potholes, and broken roads are a major concern, often resulting in accidents. “Besides accidents, vehicles were damaged, let alone the mental trauma the victim and his/her families underwent due to civic negligence,” he said.A professor at a state-run varsity, who was unwilling to be named, said round-the-clock interdepartmental coordination could be one of the solutions to avert such incidents. “One of the basic reasons behind poor roads in the city is that they are continuously dug up by one or other departments — either for pipeline repair, or laying of telecom lines, etc., and the local civic body often remains unaware about it,” he said.Agreeing to the professor’s comment, Anand said fixing strict accountability could be the key to minimising accidents. “In case of death or injury due to bad road engineering or potholes, which is primarily a civic apathy of the administration, we never see action taken against any govt official or the agency concerned. Also, people don’t even fight for it. The day any govt official is booked for poor roads in any locality, things will improve immediately,” he added.
