Events & Issues
New Delhi, 27
October 2016
Roads &
Connectivity
STRICT
MONITORING CRUCIAL
By Dhurjati
Mukherjee
The present NDA Government has
rightly focussed on the roads sector as connectivity is the key to growth,
specially in the rural and semi-urban areas of the country. According to
available reports, the Centre has planned to develop 44 highway stretches,
totalling 27,000 km as ‘economic corridors’ for seamless movement of cargo
vehicles, deepen economic activities and in the process create jobs. This new
plan is expected to be completed within six years.
It is understood that this would be
the biggest highway expansion plan since the rolling out of the Golden
Quadrilateral and North-South East-West corridor, totalling 13,000 km. during
the Vajpayee regime. These stretches pass through and connect major hubs of
economic activities such as manufacturing clusters and ports.
Another 15,000 km has been
identified to be developed as feeder routes to these economic corridors, which
will be developed by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. Interconnecting
corridors will also be developed to link the 44 economic corridors and the
Golden Quadrilateral. This network would eventually carry 80 per cent of the
country’s freight.
There is also a proposal to rebrand
national highways as national corridors, economic corridors and feeder roads
aimed at better and faster connectivity across the country. This work may be
carried out under the ‘Bharat Mala’
programme geared towards highway development that will link ports, logistic
hubs, border areas for boosting cargo movement and help in boosting up overall
growth.
But while creation of national
highways is a necessity, a recent report of the Road Transport Ministry
revealed that 78 per cent of these highways are either one or two lane affairs.
One third is less than two lanes, making the task of four-laning India’s
economic lifeline a challenging endeavour. Nearly 40 per cent including rural,
intra-district and State highways are not metalled, outlining limitations in
connectivity.
According to the report, just five States
– Maharashtra, UP, Karnataka, West Bengal and Assam – account for 43 per cent of
the road network. Assam has
the maximum length of unsurfaced roads (2.67 lakh km) followed by West Bengal
and Maharashtra (1.85 lakh km each). Even Delhi, which ranks fourth
in the list of States with maximum urban roads, has nearly 8700 km of
unsurfaced stretches. The report is dismal and the Centre would need to nudge
these and other States to improve quality of roads.
As per available statistics, road
length increased from 33.73 lakh km in 2000-01 to 54.72 lakh km in 2015 – the
second largest network in the world -- out of which rural roads account for 61
per cent of the entire network. State and national highways, which carry over
60 per cent traffic, have around 5 per cent share. There are now plans to
increase the length of these highways from 1.05 lakh km to 1.40 lakh km.
It may be mentioned here that at
0.66 km of roads per square km of land, the quantitative density of India’s road network is similar to that of the United States (0.65) and far higher than that of
China (0.16) or Brazil (0.20).
However, qualitatively India’s
roads are a mix of modern highways and narrow, unpaved roads, and are being
improved, but rather slowly. As of 2013, only around 58 per cent of Indian roads
were paved which may have improved to around 62 lakh.
Though the Government decision of
expanding national highways is a right decision as there are still large areas,
which are not well connected, there are other problems that need to be
resolved. Possibly the biggest challenge is the need for immediate widening of
national highways at least to two lanes ones – if not four -- as also surfacing
those obviously for vital cargo movement and better connectivity. Incidentally,
it is not known what the Government plans to do regarding these large
stretches. Long-term planning given the growing and haphazard traffic is indeed
something which lacks in our administration. This must change.
While the activity entails huge
expenditure, the Government has started the National Infrastructure Fund (NIF)
with a corpus fund of Rs 40,000 crores. This Fund would take care of roads
development and boosting up clean energy. In the current financial year,
budgetary allocation of Rs 4000 crores has been made with funding from other
investors such as Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Russia’s
RUSNANO, Qatar Investment Authority and Singapore’s GHIC among others.
Moreover, there are expectations that the amount would be considerably
increased in the next fiscal, both from budgetary and external sources.
One may mention here the Rural Roads
Development Vision Plan (RRDPV) 2025 (formulated way back in 2007), in its
broad assessment of the physical and financial requirements for roads, found that
investments in construction, upgrading and maintenance would need to increase
from the current level of Rs 11,000 crores per annum to Rs 29,000 crores per
annum by the 14th Plan (2022-27). The Vision document stated that the proposed
current investment of 0.9 per cent of the GDP should be considered modest and
realistic.
RRDPV observed that 80 per cent of
rural roads are in a poor condition due to a combination of factors including
poor quality construction though it has shown some improvement with PMSGY
projects. The Rural Roads Development Agency established to coordinate and
monitor PMSGY has set up a three-tier quality control mechanism with the State
governments responsible for the first two. However, in majority of the other
rural road projects executed in other schemes, there is no quality control, the
result being standards and longevity are far below expectations.
With the thrust on infrastructure
development in the rural sector, road construction activity is picking up. It is a well-known fact that
road connectivity along with electricity access has a great impact in
development of villages and the thrust of the last few years has witnessed high
wage growth in rural India
than in urban areas, according to a study by Crisil and other agencies.
Simultaneously, a renewed thrust on
research and development to build sustainable and environment friendly road
infrastructure is imperative for faster growth of the country and improving the
livelihood conditions of the people. The various components of such strategy
should be improvement in design, modernization of construction techniques,
introduction of improved materials conforming to latest standards, evolving
better and appropriate specifications, use of marginal materials etc. Thus,
these have to be put in place at the earliest to improve performance, reduce
maintenance cost, reduce life-cycle costs and the likes, so that roads could be
long lasting and durable in different weather conditions. A stitch in time
saves nine. --INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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