A ₹50 crore road project sanctioned in 2021 has barely moved — and the people of Rumgong have finally had enough.
Rumgong came to a grinding halt on Monday. Shops pulled down their shutters. Vehicles stayed parked. The streets, usually buzzing with the rhythm of a small hill town, fell unusually quiet — not out of calm, but out of anger.
The Hirit Banggo Development Committee enforced a 24-hour bandh across Rumgong in Siang district, throwing a sharp spotlight on something that has quietly frustrated residents for years: a 22-kilometre road from Boleng to Rumgong that was supposed to change lives, but seems stuck in a loop of delays, excuses and bureaucratic indifference.
Business organisations, transport operators, and ordinary residents didn’t just stay home — they came out. The road march through Rumgong town was loud and determined. Slogans rang out against the PWD authority. The protest culminated in a dharna staged right outside the offices of the PWD Executive Engineer and the Rumgong ADC. If there was any doubt about where the anger was directed, the protesters made it very clear.
The project in question is no small affair. Sanctioned in 2021 with a budget of ₹50 crore, the Boleng-Rumgong PWD road was meant to connect communities, ease transport, and open up economic lifeline routes in a region that depends heavily on road access. The construction was handed to GTC company. Four years on, the numbers tell an embarrassing story.
Of the full 22-km stretch — split between the Boleng PWD division covering roughly 12 km and the Rumgong PWD division handling the rest — only 10.5 kilometres on the Boleng side has reportedly been developed so far. That’s less than half the road. Less than half the promise.
Shops remained closed through the day, and vehicles off the roads, though essential services were kept out of the bandh’s scope. That’s a small mercy in a situation that has tested the patience of a community that has been waiting for functional infrastructure for years.
What makes this particularly hard to swallow is that this isn’t a remote wish list item — a 22-km road connecting a district headquarters to its interior areas is basic. It’s the kind of infrastructure that determines whether a child gets to school, whether a farmer gets produce to market, whether a sick person reaches a hospital in time. Every kilometre left unpaved carries a real human cost.
The protesters aren’t just angry at the construction company. Their allegations point to a wider circle of failure — negligence by PWD officials, inaction by the local administration, and a contractor apparently in no hurry to fulfil its obligations. When three different institutions are pointed at simultaneously, it usually means accountability has slipped through every crack.
For now, the bandh has made some noise. Whether it translates into movement on the ground — actual earth moved, actual road built — remains the real question.
The people of Rumgong aren’t asking for anything extraordinary. They’re asking for a road that was already sanctioned, already funded, and already contracted. They’re asking for what was already promised. And they’ve waited long enough.
