Bihar faces crisis with over a dozen bridge collapses affecting daily travel
Bihar, is clinging to a single, wobbly pillar.
“Even if we walk on it, the bridge shakes,” says Pratima Devi, Bharti’s wife, calling it a bridge to hell. “Hamara bank, bazaar sab udhar na hai, kiya kore (Our bank, market are all on that side, what can we do)?” she asks. Then, a buffalo herder comes with his animals. He warily releases them in ones and twos across the bridge, wondering if it might collapse under their hoofs.
About 320 km southeast of Siwan, Ajay Yadav recalls witnessing a huge bridge collapsing not once, but thrice, in Sultanganj. Pointing towards the bridge that is under construction, he says, “I don’t know if this bridge will ever be completed, but even if it does, I’ll wait for months before I dare to use it.”
Yadav, a 51-year-old pakora seller at Jahaj Ghat, is not talking about some flimsy bamboo bridge in a remote village but about a Rs 1,700 crore project over the Ganga, intended to link Sultanganj in Bhagalpur with Aguwani Ghat in Khagaria district.
This 3.16 km, four-lane, cable-stayed bridge with a footpath has collapsed three times in the last nine years it has been under construction.
The state of Bihar’s bridges has been a source of growing fear and caution, with over a dozen ones collapsing since mid-June and several others teetering dangerously. The frequent collapse of bridges has people pointing the finger at corruption and misgovernance in the state.
In the Maharajganj sub-division of Siwan district, ET visited the site of one bridge that had been washed away and of two
