Zahrah Nasir A deep roaring boom periodically reverberates through the house, rattling windows and doors, sending nerve wracked dogs scurrying for cover. The mountain peace has been well and truly shattered and the disruption is far from over yet. The explosive blasting has two sources: one just along from my home, the other a few hundred yards above and both 'mining operations, I suspect, are completely illegal. The first, small venture, is the excavation of rock for the construction of what I know to be an illegal kutcha house in the most dangerous place imaginable, the foundations being hacked into the top of a precipitous slope tumbling hundreds of feet down to the valley below with, once the house is occupied, raw sewage inevitably following suit. The second is, for this neck of the woods, a very large undertaking indeed as a team of men, supervised by a local contractor, are carving out what is intended to be a pucca road to replace the torturously steep footpath many of us clamber up and down when venturing into the world 'outside. This is not to say that we dont already have road access as we have had this dubious pleasure for all of five years now although, frankly speaking, giving the all ready crumbling track the title of 'road is stretching imagination somewhat. This first vehicular access was countless years in the coming but it did eventually loop around the mountain side bringing havoc and change in its wake. The figure of Rs 11.5 million was banded about as being its cost but the hardly single track, minus passing places, of tarmac was crumbling and subsiding within a mere three months of completion although 'completion is an incorrect term as it never got as far as linking up with a similar affair further round the mountain. A stupendous Rs 11.5 million, if this figure is correct, for a two and a half kilometre road to nowhere was utterly ridiculous and much of the funding obviously found its way into a variety of pockets. Now they are at it again This time around the road, coming straight down the mountain instead of meandering around, is to be done in fits and starts as only Rs 3.5 million has been made available for the purpose according to the local contractor in charge of the job, a different contractor than for the last mess I rush to point out. When finally completed, this second access will link up with the first rapidly deteriorating one andstill end up nowhere. I am assured that this new venture will be better than the first, that there will be passing places and drainage points too but surely it would have been more logical to do something about the initial fiasco instead of further destabilising the mountain side, part of which is seriously prone to landslides, by blasting it to bits? The venture was launched with a biriyani feast: the goat slaughtered, cooked over a wood fire, served up and devoured within a space of three hours or less with people rubbing their hands in glee, not at the prospect of another road but at the anticipated increase in land prices which will indubitably follow. Prior to the advent of the first road property and land prices here were pretty nominal as compared to prices of similar places near the main road a few kilometres away. Living here meant a walk/climb of approximately two kilometres when going out, the same when returning home laden with shopping and people were trying to move out not in. Road access changed all this: property prices went through the roof, illegal constructions sprung up almost overnight, locals sold off parcels of land much preferring to live on their loot rather than actually work for a living, water became an even scarcer commodity than usual and brides travel by taxi instead of in a shoulder borne palanquin. This process of modernisation is fine providing, that is, some form of even basic infrastructure comes with it which, needless to say, it hasnt. Summer residents squander precious water and dump inordinate volumes of garbage in what remains of the fast shrinking forest. The local population now get car loads of visitors on a regular basis, visitors who rarely came before as they couldnt face the necessary hike, visitors who naturally consume water in a variety of ways and who also dump garbage in any convenient spot. Civic sense does not exist. A second road will open up another swathe of forest to the construction mafia, the area will degrade even further and water will be traded like the gold it is. The provision of decent road access is of vast economic importance for rural areas throughout the country but meticulous planning must go with it. The impact of roads on the environment should be given consideration and, with climate change taking its toll, the provision of adequate water supplies and storage cisterns, including rain water harvesting facilities, must be made mandatory in locations where road access will lead to a jump in population figures. This aside though, there is another worrying aspect, particularly in respect of blasting rock undertaken by untrained local people and this iswhere do they get the dynamite from as surely it is a controlled substance? The writer is a Murree-based freelance columnist.