Jharkhand! (Part 1)

Recently, I got an opportunity to visit Jamshedpur. No, I am not writing a travelogue. That is the domain of guys like this. My expertise lie elsewhere. I am not sure exactly where, though. Hence I will just jot down some of the interesting things that happened in this trip in a systematic fashion that I call 'random'.

This was my first time ever in Jharkhand or undivided Bihar. There were 3 of us. We took a cab from Kolkata to Jamshedpur. It was an air-conditioned Toyota Innova, so we did not get to 'experience' Kolkata as such. I had seen the city before, but the folks with me kept saying the whole city looks like it is covered with soot... everything was of dull grey without much other color or shine. I know the reasons for this: 1) We were passing through the old part of the city 2) Kolkata's proximity to the sea. It is not easy to maintain the external paint of buildings in this weather.

The road we took - the highway to Mumbai was in excellent shape. However, good things can't last. We took a deviation from the highway near Kharagpur (of IIT fame) towards Jamshedpur. I have a big suspicion that at this stage our Innova somehow launched into space and landed on the moon. The 'national highway' that we were on had no resemblance whatsoever to the national highway we were on until then. The ideal vehicle for this road was not an Innova but a hovercraft.

Throughout our 6 hour journey, every single piece of agricultural land we saw on the sides of the road had paddy cultivated in it. We literally did not see a single other crop anywhere on the way. How's that?

We passed through a few villages, but we hardly saw any shops selling condiments. This is unlike the South India, where you can find a shop selling Kurkure, Bisleri and Pepsi even in smallest villages on the highway.

We saw a huge number of those long trucks carrying industrial produces, most of them steel products. Surprisingly, a disproportionately large number of them were Nagaland registered (NL). Yes, I have a habit of observing vehicle registration plates. Most of these trucks were carrying railway axles. There must some reason to Nagaland trucks plying on Jharkhand roads, like tax benefits, unless the railways are planning major rail network explansion in Nagaland. That would be fun, though. Trains on mountains, more locations to shoot songs like Chaiya Chaiya.

The only English newspaper easily available in Jamshedpur was "The Telegraph". Well, I know this is a historic, great newspaper and all, but I never thought this would be so popular in this state. In Kolkata, I can understand...

The Telegraph told us why the national highways were in the stage they were. Money had been approved for repairing them, tenders had been called multiple times, but nobody had placed a bid. This is because the naxals don't let any road repair work happen at all. We now quickly linked naxals to absense of condiment stores along the highway as well.

The public are not far too behind. Bus service between Ranchi (yeah, Dhoni's) and Jamshedpur was in dire conditions because of non-co-operation of general public. Bad condition of the roads and naxals only added to the trouble.

Parts of Jamshedpur are maintained by the tatas (Tatanagar) and the rest of the urban local body (municipality?) Tatanagar is a huge contrast to everything else we saw in Jharkhand. We saw the "Jubilee Park", which I must admit is one of the best maintained parks I have seen in a while.

Wow, I have written a lot! I never thought I would write so much. I have some more. In Part 2.