144 km rural roads built a day in FY09

There is a great story developing in one segment of the roads sector — rural roads — where the pace of construction has been steadily picking up. A record 144 kilometres of roads were built every day last year (2008-09) and the target this year (ending March 2010) is to take this up to 151 kilometres per day.

This is in stark contrast to the pace of construction of the national highways which had slackened to about 4 km a day. Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Kamal Nath wants to scale this up to 20 km a day.

A typical rural road is, however, built for low volume of traffic and therefore easier to construct. It could cost anywhere from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 40 lakh a kilometre, whereas national highways cost Rs 6-10 crore per kilometre.

These rural roads are being constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), which aims at linking all habitations with a population of 500 or above (250 or above in some priority states) with all-weather roads.

PMGSY was launched in December 2000 with a target to connect about 168,000 habitations. The last estimated project cost (at 2003-04 prices) is Rs 1.3 lakh crore for building 365,094 km of roads and for upgrading an additional 368,000 km.

About a third of these habitations were taken up for connectivity under the Bharat Nirman programme.

Despite the hectic pace, the Bharat Nirman target of March 2009 could not be met, and it is running behind schedule.

“I would not say that we are behind schedule. I would say that we have been over-ambitious in setting targets,” said a senior official of the National Rural Roads Development Agency (NRRDA), who did not want to be named.

“The Bharat Nirman targets are likely to be completed by 2010-11,” the official added.

NRRDA was set up under the rural development ministry in 2002 to monitor, support and drive the rural roads programme.

The whole programme of providing connectivity to the 168,000 identified habitations is likely to be completed only by 2015, since as of June 30, 2009, only about 40 per cent of the eligible habitations had been connected.

Various measures have been taken to expedite the construction of rural roads and bring it to the current level. The bid documents are standardised. There is an objective formula to decide the depth and the strength of the road to be built. Timelines for completion of road construction are also fixed at the outer limit of 21 months.

Though rural roads is a state subject, it was taken up by the Centre, recognizing “centrality” of all weather access and mobility.

The funding for the programme is partly from the cess levied on diesel and partly through loans arranged from multilateral institutions.

The maintenance of these roads is, however, funded by the state governments.