Tags:
Journalism of Courage
DRIVING down from Kotputli to Amer, on the National Highway NH-8, with low-lying mountain ranges and the ramparts of a picturesque fort to your right, it8217;s not too difficult to imagine if you shut out the blaring horns of the OK Tata trucks you8217;re somewhere in southern Europe. More so, since, every couple of kilometres, there are bright-orange one-foot-by-one-foot telephone kiosks, connecting you online to a central control room which, through six remote-cameras also monitors your movements on a 24X7 basis.
One American tourist, says Ajay Bishnoi who heads the Shahpura control room on the Delhi-Jaipur highway, 8216;8216;called to ask where the bathroom was8217;8217;; another Indian tourist called to say the bus he was travelling in had moved off with his bags 8212; after a quick call to the police on the wireless, the bus was stopped and the luggage retrieved. Accidents are reported by Bishnoi8217;s team to the police within minutes, and crashed vehicles removed within a few hours, using a National Highways Authority of India NHAI crane thoughtfully seconded to the local police.
Capturing the rapid progress of India8217;s most ambitious roadways programme, of course, will take more than just six cameras 8212; as against an annual average of 250 km of highways completed in the past 50 years, 5,846 km of existing highways are to be four-laned in just three years at a cost of over Rs 30,000 crore. The annual cost savings, primarily through traffic moving at a much faster speed, is around Rs 8,000 crore according to a World Bank estimate.
In a country where acquiring land for highways can take years, and cutting of trees and re-siting electric utilities even longer, Minister of State for Roadways and Highways Major General B.C. Khanduri simply cut through the swathe, picking up the phone to talk to various Chief Ministers like Chandrababu Naidu and Naveen Patnaik to ensure all clearances were given on time for his project.
8216;8216;It took over 10 years to complete the 33 km Cuttack-Bhubaneshwar highway because of problems with clearing the site,8217;8217; says NHAI chairman Deepak Dasgupta, 8216;8216;but it8217;ll take just three years to complete the 1,684 km stretch from Kolkata to Chennai.8217;8217; And, over a period of time, Dasgupta adds, the Kotputli-Amer type of Highway Traffic Management Systems HTMS will be the norm on most of the 5,846-km project 8212; immediately, the Ahmedabad to Manor near Mumbai highway will be fitted with HTMS.
So why8217;s the NHAI8217;s project working so well, while the national highways built by the state governments programme have never really taken off so far? Clearly, money8217;s a big factor 8212; thanks to the one rupee cess on fuel, and funding from the World Bank/ADB, the NHAI was able to tie up its complete funding of Rs 30,000 crore well before they even needed it.
The biggest factor, however, is political will. In most cases nowadays, says Dasgupta, the state governments are allowing contractors who are building the highways to cut the trees, even shift electricity poles 8212; 8216;8216;this could take several months, even years, if you go by the normal procedures followed by electricity boards and forest departments.8217;8217;
One interesting example of this pro-active behaviour is when the forest department in Bihar refused to cut the trees on a plot of land despite the fact that the NHAI had paid them for it 8212; the money had been spent elsewhere by the government. A top-level meeting was held with Chief Minister Rabri Devi to resolve the issue, but instead of waiting for a result, the NHAI simply paid the amount to the
forest department all over again.
The fact that the programme had the personal blessings of Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee also helped. The then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, for instance, doubled the tax holiday on income generated from highways, and in addition, over 20 major items of road-construction equipment was allowed to be imported duty free. Attractive incentives have also been built-in 8212; for every month a project is completed earlier, an incentive will be paid. This will be equal to one per cent of the contract8217;s value. If a project is completed two months earlier, an incentive of two per cent will be given. The maximum incentive is 6 per cent. A disincentive of 1.5 pc is also to be charged for each month8217;s delay, subject to a ceiling of 9 per cent. Already, Rs 4 crore of incentives have been handed out for completing projects before schedule.
Of the 5,846 km Golden Quadrilateral project, a total of 4,700 km have already been contracted out, and is likely to be completed by the end of next year. A total of 1,074 km have already been completed see map. Next on the completion list is a 43 km stretch of the Ahmedabad-Vadodara expressway 8212; this is likely to be ready for use by the end of August. A 57 km stretch from Kaijali to Manor, on the Delhi-Mumbai highway, is also slated to be ready by June next year. The Pune bypass is planned to be completed by the end of the year, and the Belgaum one by June next year 8212; both are on the Mumbai-Chennai corridor. And once the GQ project is over, work is to begin on a north-south corridor from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, and an east-west one from Silchar to Saurashtra.
Few gave the ambitious programme a chance when it was first planned four years ago. But, with a lot of will, the project8217;s come a long way. As the then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha put it, while inaugurating a seminar on the NHDP many months ago, 8216;8216;where there8217;s a will, there8217;s a, well, highway.8217;8217;
