Let us not forget Nepal remained mired in poverty and squalor for centuries because its rivers and rivulets, villages and towns remained unconnected by bridges, which could have brought democracy and development here much earlier. Building a bridge, unfortunately, now evokes more the stories of failure than the hope of success, and that is the irony of the day
Building a bridge in the subcontinent is a metaphor of the epic Ramayana.
For millions in South India, Setubandh symbolises the prowess performed by Rama millennia ago to win his war to bring back Sita from the island celebrated as Swarnadweep. As told by Balmiki, retold by Tulsi Das, and sung by countless other poets, that event remains etched forever in the public mind here as a grand saga of victory.
That success of mythical times somehow hides the story of human triumph, more than just the triumph of virtue over evil. But how many of us take note in that episode of the triumph of Man over Nature? The bridge was built but once, but in the euphoria of the success, the listener forgets the symbolised victory of primate labour to connect the southernmost tip of South Asia to an island, whose remains are said to be visible to this day.
Building a bridge in modern times symbolises the struggle mankind has been waging in its war against Nature. And here in Nepal, it is an investment made thousands of times in the course of the century to win that war in order to connect towns, villages and communities, given the cruel terrain and uncongenial topography of our land. The value of that investment and the role of such efforts in the modernisation, development, even democratisation of Nepal, is hard to overemphasise.
But bridges not only bridge towns and villages, they also bridge hearts and minds. Bridges, moreover, generate and keep alive the hope of a new future, beckoning to aspiration that structural failures in the gaps of the past will be filled up by achievements in the days to come. This is one reason why every time a bridge is built, people rejoice and celebrate the event. The mode and momentum of that celebration, in fact, is directly proportional to the quantum and quality of the scale attempted and achieved.
Let us not forget Nepal remained mired in poverty and squalor for centuries because its rivers and rivulets, villages and towns remained unconnected by bridges, which could have brought democracy and development here much earlier. Building a bridge, unfortunately, now evokes more the stories of failure than the hope of success, and that is the irony of the day.
Why do bridges fail in Nepal? is a query the Pile Foundation for Bridge raises, and a curiosity millions ask in this digital era when the triumph of the human brain and technology should have relegated the frequency of structural failures to a negligible figure.
Chock-full of data, the author, reveals that not only quite a few of the bridges built in the hundreds every year fail at different stages before their lifespan is over but also that the failure rate has risen enormously over the few years. In the years between 2017 and 2021 alone, he claims at least 50 bridges have failed.In 2021 alone, 21 motorable bridges in different parts of the country collapsed, 11 of them, that is 54 percent, or more than half, during the construction phase, and the rest after the structural work was completed.
The figures speak volumes for themselves, and the author explains why.
Defective design, wrong selection of site, waterway diversion, inadequate geotechnical investigation, professional liability, depth of foundation, design factor, inattention to geohazards, poor supervision of quality control and maintenance are the technical factors involved. But no less crucial, as culprits in this litany of blunders, is the role politics plays – interference, pressure and politicisation are the malpractices that not only victimise the public, but also take the toll in billions of rupees, wasting the space, time and resources while devastating the hopes and dreams of the land.
Can this story of failure and devastation turn into a success? It can, says the author, probing the failures with forensic skill, who delves here deeply into the depths with a diver's zeal to yield nuggets of recommendations that could transform the tale of this litter of human greed and despair into a saga of success.
The implications such an impact hides for the future of this land one can only imagine, but it is an imagination worth bearing in mind so that the dream of democratic development becomes a day-today reality rather than a tunnel of dark murky transition that refuses to end in the decades we have travelled to grow and develop, pursuing democracy and prosperity like an ever-receding mirage.
As a graduate of the National Institute of Technology (formerly REC), Durgapur (India), author Tanuk L Yadav, an engineer, has led a number of projects during his 34 years of service with the Government of Nepal and otherwise – ADB, World Bank, the US Agency for International Development and the Swiss government.
Focussing on various types of bridge foundation, the author not only explicates the intricacies of the pile foundation for bridges but also presents case studies on recently failed bridges in Nepal to remind the bridge entrepreneur about what not to do - the fundamentals of bridge prophylactics in a realm of technological scholarship that remains a probable first venture in view of the sparse literature available so far.
Spanning 16 chapters altogether, the volume does offer figures, tables and data to explain the technicalities to the learners and professionals to dive into the etiology of bridge failure.
Yet, it leaves open the scope to improve further in another edition of the study editorially as also in laying out data – in the area of tabulation where most of the forms and figures could be offered more concisely and succinctly. In another instance, the Contents should precede rather than follow the List of Tables and Figures. All of this certainly does not qualify the overall worth of the product in a significant sense, but leaves the scope for the author to do more and, hopefully, to persevere better, in the days to come.
Deo is former chief engineer, Nepal Army
A version of this article appears in the print on July 7, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
