Neglected major road projects set to take off
With as many 40 major roads projects either stalled or running pathetically behind schedule largely due to the incompetence of the previous Congress-led UPA regime, the Union Ministry of Roads, Transport and Highways has decided to take the bull by the horns. Since kick-starting major road and highway projects had been one of the priority areas the Bharatiya Janata Party had identified during its lok Sabha election campaign, it is not surprising that the new Union Minister for Roads, Transport and Highways, Mr Nitin Gadkari, has sunk his teeth into the assignment. He has an unenviable task at hand but from all accounts he has made a good beginning. Mr Gadkari has asked the National Highways Authority of India to prepare and submit to him a detailed report on the individual projects which have been held up, and the reasons for the hold-up. It is evident that the Minister is determined to tackle the obstacles and bring the projects back on track. But because several of the stalled work is also due to impediments that are State-specific, Mr Gadkari is preparing to discuss the issue threadbare with State Governments. The possibility of his inviting Chief Ministers to discuss the matter is welcome. Meanwhile, there are many bottlenecks that can be addressed, or at least discussed so that a clear map of implementation can be worked out. For that, meetings at the Secretary-level can be initiated.
A suggestion that clusters of three to four States should be formed and the issue of reviving and speeding up road projects must be discussed with their representatives, including the Chief Ministers, is a good one. While all 29 Chief Ministers taking part in a single meeting will give the sense of grandness to the event, the outcome could turn out to be more bureaucratic. On the other hand, there would be more focus when small groups of Chief Ministers meet the Union Minister one at a time. In any case, these are matters of detail; what is essential is that the meetings produce action and not just end up as ponderous paper resolutions.
One of the biggest hurdles in road, especially highway, construction has been land acquisition. Both the Centre and the States have run into enormous trouble with it, particularly in the area of adequate compensation to be given to the people whose land was being acquired. While the new Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, which came into force late last year, seeks to tackle many of the issues that had dogged previous attempts at smooth acquisition of land, there are still certain rules that need to be tweaked to both cut down the period of acquisition and provide just compensation to the affected citizens. Meanwhile, highways projects worth as much as 1.5 lakh crore cannot remain stalled and in turn affect several sectors of economic growth across the country.