Without waiting for govt help, Malana villagers make bridge on their own

Abhinav Vashisht

Kullu, August 6

Keeping the government’s lax response to last year’s flood disasters in mind, the residents of Malana village had to shoulder the responsibility of constructing a temporary wooden bridge over the Malana nullah on their own.

The villagers collectively endured hard physical labour and built the temporary wooden bridge on their own within a day on Monday. They pulled big wooden logs to the nullah with the help of ropes. They erected the embankments and laid the wooden planks over the base of three wooden logs laid horizontally. With the construction of the temporary bridge, the villagers will not face any problems crossing the nullah for now.

The connectivity to the village was disrupted after the bridge was washed away due to flooding of the nullah. A cloudburst led to the bursting of the barrage of Malana Hydel Project-I on the night of July 31. The disaster also caused damage in Baladhi and Chowki villages downstream, besides many human casualties.

Meanwhile, a temporary ropeway span is being constructed for Baladhi village by the administration. Chief Parliamentary Secretary Sunder Singh Thakur said that the chief minister had given approval to install three ropeways at Malana, Baladhi and Chowki villages. However, preserving one of the oldest surviving democracies, the villagers of Malana took the task upon themselves and constructed the bridge, just five days after the disaster struck.

Similarly, both the bridges connecting the Tosh village in Manikaran valley to the local market were washed away because of flooding of the Tosh nullah due to a cloudburst on the night of July 29. The people were facing difficulties crossing the nullah to reach the market. There too, the villagers constructed a temporary wooden bridge to the village on their own.

The road from Jari village to the nearest motorable point near Malana suffered extensive damage at five spots due to the disaster. It is still a challenge for the administration to provide help there. Some tourists stranded in the village were rescued by the district administration team with the assistance of villagers on Sunday. The police also rescued two tourists going to Malana from the Jari-Chowki trek route.

Many footbridges were damaged in the flood disasters of July last year and have not been reconstructed yet, stop-gap arrangement of temporary ropeway spans continues in these areas. However, the people of Malana and Tosh did not wait for the government machinery to remove their woes and solved their issues within almost no time after the disaster.