The first major step towards improving roads and highways was taken by AB Vajpayee in 1999 with the projects of the Golden Quadrilateral (connecting the four cities of Delhi, Mumbai. Chennai and Kolkata), and the two corridors - East-West (Porbandar, Gujarat – Silchar, Assam) and the North-South (Srinagar, J&K – Kanya Kumari, Tamil Nadu) corridors. And this had a spill-over effect on many parts of the country.
India has the second largest road network in the world, spanning almost 60 lakhs (6 million) kms. Since 1999, highway construction has been regularly taking place, though at varying pace. The percentage of rural roads has also crossed 70% now which is very impressive indeed – wonder if there is any reclassification here 😊. The length of national highways increased from 70,934 km in 2010–11 to 132,500 km in 2019. Progress has really picked up in the time of the current government - It was 7 km/day in April ’20, and is rapidly increasing - it even touched a high of 33 km/day in Jun ’20. Thereafter it did dip as the Covid19 crisis resulted in acute shortage of workers etc. with movements back to their home towns; pace is now again very high.
The Government is working on policies to attract significant investor interest. The recent addition is the Bharatmala Pariyojana – 50 new National corridors, and connecting 550 districts of the country through NH linkages.
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3 comments:
From my friend PC: 👍. I had seen during after 1999 there were roads connecting to the v remote areas in the hills while visiting chamba and tehri districts and other remote hilly areas in himachal named as pradhan mantri sadak yojna .
And not named after anyone 😄. This is the USP . U wont find modi bijli parihojna or mosi sadak pariyojna etc. but im glad we have atal tunnel. Atleast kuch to hai kisi aur ke naam pe
From my friend LAR:Informative and nice! Well done!!
From AK: Mr Bajpai was the person who had a great vision. The Governor House boundary in front of PWD office was rounded to clear space for easy traffic movement.
He also made two boundary walls of the Secretariat circular in order to ease traffic.
Though these were small changes but have gone a long way in reducing traffic blockages.
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