Rough roads ahead

Doonites are being taken by surprise seeing about two dozen tongas plying on Rajpur Road. The tongawalas were not from the celluloid world, they were real and were protesting against the introduction of buses in Dalanwala, the quiet residential area of the city. Tongas have been replaced by Vikrams in the rest of the city, leaving the few to ply in the lanes of Dalanwala. Everyone agrees it is a bad trade-off.
The owners of the tongas are protesting that the introduction of buses in Dalanwala will throttle their livelihood. They are already in a precarious condition because of the introduction of auto-rickshaws on their route.
The tongawalas have requested the Dehradun RTO, T.P.S Kundalia, to cancel the permits given to the buses on their route. Besides their livelihoods being lost, they have a valid argument that the roads in Dalanwala are not wide enough for buses.
With a good number of schools in the area, the vehicular traffic in the area should be kept minimal. Majority of the people living in Dalanwala are also of the opinion that buses should not run in their otherwise quite neighbourhood. Many of the people living in Dalanwala feel that without working out an alternative for the tongawalas, the decision to allow the buses in the area would not prove to be a prudent one.