Tripura is Out of Fuel and No One Seems to Care

It is a story the country seems to have missed. There is a state of near emergency in Tripura as the state has run out of fuel supplies.

Over the last three months, incessant rains have rendered unusable the badly-maintained National Highway 8 (NH-8) which connects landlocked Tripura from the northern side. Over 3000 trucks carrying food, fuel and other essential commodities are stuck; the supply of petrol, diesel and LPG are the worst-hit.

Only one fuel pump in capital Agartala has any stock, and at any given time there is at least a six km queue of vehicles waiting to fill up. This week the state government imposed an odd-even policy at the fuel station, but that hardly addressed the problem.

The acute shortage has hit household budgets, with LPG cylinders costing around Rs 550 going in the black market at over Rs 2500.

Prices of essential commodities have sky-rocketed. Schools have stopped bus services and some students are forced to walk over 10 kms to attend classes.

NH-8, the only life-line for the state, is surrounded by Bangladesh on three sides. Even by March, the stretch of highway in Barak Valley - which falls in Assam - had turned into a stretch of mud; with the arrival of the monsoons, cranes and elephants were called in to haul trucks across.

Left-ruled Tripura complains it is left to tackle by itself an issue which originated in a neighbouring state. “We have had no support from the Centre or from our neighbouring state. The monsoon has made things worse and the reserves have dried up,” says Tripura’s Food and Civil Supplies Minister Bhanulal Saha.

The condition of the national highway was one of the issues in Barak Valley during the recent Assam state polls. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sarbananda Sonowal, the BJP leader who was subsequently elected Chief Minister, had promised to get the road repaired. Two months and several rains later, the stretch has been further riven by floods and landslides.

With patience running out, this week saw massive protests in Agartala. People complain that Manik Sarkar - who has been chief minister since 1998 - is getting complacent, while the government says neither the Centre nor BJP-ruled Assam are responding to their pleas.

A direct train connecting Agartala to Delhi will be inaugurated on July 31, but it remains to be seen whether this alone would address the crisis. Till more help comes in, Tripura would continue to suffer in isolation, and for the rest of the country, the issue would remain in the foot notes.