Infrastructure gets huge face-lift in last nine years: UPA

The infrastructure sector received a huge face-lift in the last nine years with improvement in road and railway networks, power generation and teledensity, among others, says the UPA government's report card.

The improvement in road infrastructure was noteworthy with the National Highways Authority of India building or upgrading 17,394 km road in the last nine years, the report card released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said.

Investment in roads, which has seen 10-fold rise during the period, has helped small farmers to carry their produce to markets where they got improved returns, it said. More than 2 lakh km of rural road network have been added, it added.

In the last fiscal alone, a Rs 6,450 crore investment has been made to build or upgrade 21,000 km of all-weather roads.

Railway network has also been equipped enough to carry 8,224 million people and more than one billion tonnes goods a year, the report card said.

"Work has begun on Western and Eastern Dedicated Freight corridors which will modernise the railway network and take it to a new level," it said.

In the power sector, more generation capacity has been added during the last nine years than in the entire preceding period since the Independence.

Generation from renewable sources has reached new levels while per capita consumption of electricity has gone up to 813 kWh in 2011 from 559 kWh in 2002.

During the tenure of UPA government, teledensity in rural areas went up 25 times, and the country has one of the lowest telecom prices in the world, it said.

"Broadband will reach 2.5 lakh villages by 2014. Internet and broadband services have increased more than 100 times during the UPA tenure," it said.