Rural connectivity in way of all-weather roads is vital to socio-economic development of the villagers. Road as an essential public asset contributes to minimising extreme poverty and improving quality of life through improving rural communities’ access to basic rural infrastructure and amenities like safe drinking water, electrification, sanitation, hygiene, hospital, education and market.
The village linking road is a basic infrastructure of human habitation used by all members of the community which is very much required for the overall development of the village. Rural Odisha has been facing serious communication problem in the absence of all-weather village linking road in many backward parts, hilly, tribal and coastal areas of the State. It has been evident that mostly a majority of the habitations of marginalised groups, Dalits and Adivasis’ hamlets located at the end of the village. There are such hamlets surrounded by the paddy fields, interior forests and hilly areas, and costal water logging areas which are not being connected with all-weather roads. The people living in such habitations without all-weather linking road have been suffering a lot, especially in the rainy seasons with extremely difficulties to go out of home. The children, elderly people, PWD, women and sick are the worst sufferers in their day-to-day life. These families are almost house arrested due to water-logging and managing cattle population is a difficult task for them. The children cannot go to school and pregnant women and sick people reach hospitals with lots of difficulties. There are villages in costal districts where people have to use boat made of banana stalks to go out of habitation in the rainy season. Many of the habitations are using thin field divider patch (locally called it Hida) as the only route of communication to the village.
Bilasahi is a hamlet of 60 poor Dalit families under Bari block of Jajpur district where people in rainy days take recourse to Kadalivela (made of thick banana stalks) to tide over the main road which is about half a km. They are in a hazardous condition due to poor sanitation during the rainy days. 15 Dalit families of Chandakuda hamlet under Dasarathpur block of Jajpur district are also facing the same problem due to non availability of linking road. They have to walk one and a half km through agriculture fields and cross a small river to reach the main road. About 15 km from the State capital, having 35 Dalit families residing at Rajasa Mathasahi hamlet under Balipatana tehsil of Khurda district is situated at the last portion of the village having no communication facility. The people in the hamlet have to walk about half a km to reach at the main road of the village. These hamlets are covered with agricultural land of dominant people from all sides. The people are using the land embankment as the path for their communication. They have to depend on the willingness of land lord. The land owners are not usually allowing the people to trespass through their land. A serious patient cannot be shifted to the village main road as no vehicle is able to enter into the hamlet.
Goods cannot be transported to/from the hamlet which also affects the development of other social infrastructure of the hamlet. The people in these hamlets faced many difficulties during rainy season. They have to face very hazardous situation to carry a dead body into the cremation ground. They have to maintain their life like prisoners without having access to the other world. There are many coastal villages and inlands surrounded by rivers which remain disconnected from the main road where people use boat and traditional ways to go out which causes a number of accidents taking a heavy toll of life and loss of property.
In tribal and hilly areas, people have to carry the patient with traditional carriers to reach at hospitals in case of urgency. There are hundreds of such villages in the State, where people use the traditional foot walk route for their day- to- day communication to the main road and access to educational institutions, hospital, market and Government offices which take much of their time and deprive them of the process of development.
There are habitations which are not being declared as revenue villages without a linking road in revenue map of the area and people use the common land as communication route to the habitations which are not getting approved by Panchayats to build all- weather road. The Dalit and Adivasi hamlets and small habitations existing since generations are not being provided with basic infrastructures like linking-road in spite of repeated request by people to the local administration. There is a lack of coordination among Revenue and Panchayati Raj institutions in building linking roads to these Dalit and Adivasi hamlets. As a majority of the rural habitations are coming up in caste and community line and people from different caste groups form a village but it has been very often reported that the village linking roads are not being inclusive of all caste groups and in many of the villages, the linking road ends at hamlet of dominant caste and not reaching to the end of the village where the habitation of marginalised groups such as Dalit and Adivasi basties are located.
The poor and illiterate people are unaware of their basic human rights to free access and fail to put pressure on local governance to get a linking road for their hamlet. There is a provision that the Revenue department should provide linking road to every habitation and along with support from Rural Development Department, the Panchayati Raj institutions should use the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan (SCSP) and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) fund to connect all Dalit and Adivasi hamlets with roads. Studies by the Planning Commission and International Food Policy Research Institute established that poor road connectivity has a high correlation with high level of poor standard of living, poor health, illiteracy, unemployment, migration and poverty. The States having poor connectivity and high incidence of poverty includes Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand. Odisha is the 21st ranked in un-connectivity rank, Bihar is 23rd and Jharkhand is 28th in the country.
The States like Haryana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa and AP have exhibited high rural road connectivity in the country. The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) lunched in 2000 by the Union Ministry of Rural Development is meant to provide connectivity in way of all-weather roads to all habitations in the country. The State Panchayati Raj Department has lunched Gopabandhu Gramina Yojana (GGY) in 2006 as additional assistance to districts not covered under the Backward Region Grant Fund (BRGF) where rural connectivity, intra village and inter village, has got top priority with allocation of 60 per cent of the total fund for road sector. The construction of cement and concrete (CC) road inside the village with drainage facility has been given emphasis and in case of there is no need of CC road inside the village, the approach/link road from the main road can also be developed. The financial institutions like Asian Development Bank, World Bank and NABARD are being involved in road sector along with the Government to develop rural connectivity. Indian Road Congress, the standard setting body for roads in India, has recommended for the use of industrial waste in construction of rural road by fly ash, iron and steel slag and other industrial waste available in Odisha. The other rural development and employment generating programmes like MGNREGA should be integrated with developing rural roads. Odisha being a poor State with high incidence of poverty of large rural population and large presence of SCs and STs should improve its rural road connectivity. Taking all the advantage of the Central Government schemes and funds of financial institutions, the State Government has to build a comprehensive long-term plan in the light of rural road development plan vision 2015 for Odisha and implement it with true spirit by empowering and fully involving the PRI institutions with finance, power and responsibility. This will contribute to eradicate poverty and ensure quality of life of rural people and lead to inclusive development with reducing rural and urban gap in the State.
(The writer is a rights activist, who can be reached at ojaabbsr@gmail.com )