Who’s responsible in Daman?

Things have always been that way in Daman, where life moves at the pace of a stroll by its beaches. Its dozen or so central administrators see the posting as a paid holiday. The 15-member municipality has inadequate funds. With only one MP, Daman hardly catches distant Delhi’s attention, even when it’s waving frantically for help.

The collector weakly points out that on August 28, the day the bridge collapsed, final clearance for a new bridge had come through. What is telling is that it was a proposal lying uncleared for more than 10 years. The Centre, responsible for union territories, seems to spare only the cursory glance to these areas. A flurry of attention arrives either with VVIP holidays or, as in this case, with tragedy.

So it was not unusual that the drowning of school children provoked the laidback Damanvasis to violent anger. Officials escaped much of that wrath only because the bridge had collapsed: Government offices, schools, and colleges are all in Moti Daman while Nani Daman is a residential area. Agitators stoned Union Minister of State for Home Harin Pathak’s car. They also raged against local Congress MP, Dahyabhai Patel, who had promised a new bridge in his election manifesto. Now Pathak says all the anger was directed at Patel, who says it was directed at the administration. The blame game has been played out here for so long that probably for the first time the people of Daman turned so violent that police had to open fire. They have revived the old demand for appointment of a lieutenant governor, and ultimately, statehood.

Building the bridge may take at least five years, and till then Daman will remain dismembered: The only ways across the Damanganga are a ferry and a 14 km detour with a causeway that is unusable when the river is full. But the people are willing to endure that. It’s the morass of too much langour, too much unaccountability that they no longer want to endure.