TWO years after its birth, the state of Chhattisgarh seems to be treading the road to development. And what better way to start than with its roads and highways. The result: most people now prefer to travel by road than rail — a commendable achievement for an area which was infamous for its bad roads.A measure of the progress is evident in a comparison of the journey time.n The Raipur-Bilaspur Road, 118 km, which used to take four hours earlier can now be covered in two hours;n The Raipur-Rajnandgaon Road, 70 km, can now be traversed in 1 hour 45 minutes, down from the earlier three hours;n The Raipur-Ambikapur Road, 348 km, takes only seven hours as compared to the earlier 12-hour drive;n Similarly, the journey time between Raipur-Jagdalpur, Raipur-Bilaspur-Champa, Raipur-Korba, and Raipur-Mahasaumnd has been cut down.The state has come a long way from the days when there were no roads, either motorable or non-motorable, in several places. As a result, the area, despite having rich deposits of minerals like diamond, gold, bauxite, coal, iron ore, dolomite and limestone, remained poor.The change is especially visible on roads which see a lot of traffic, barring those in the Naxal-affected areas of Bastar and Dantewara districts, which border Andhra Pradesh, where the People’s War Group militants do not allow the Border Roads Organisation to carry out work on National Highway 16. ‘‘Our roads were in such a bad shape that even the paths and fields bordering the roads were considered to be better. But now Chhattisgarh’s roads can beat those in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Maharashtra — qualitatively and materially,’’ says Tarun Chatterjee, State Public Works Department (PWD) Minister.That the State Government is giving top priority to its roads is evident from the increase in the budget for roads. A year before the formation of the state, it was just Rs 63 crores for the area. In its first budget passed for 2001-2002, the Chhattisgarh Government raised the amount substantially to Rs 320 crores. For the current financial year, it was raised to Rs 448 crores. But since the entire allocation was utilised by the third quarter, the finance department sanctioned an additional Rs 200 crores last month. If this is pooled in with the central grants earmarked for rural roads and National Highways, the allocation for roads could exceed Rs 1300 crores in this single year. Besides, new tie-ups with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Malaysian Government, exclusively for rural roads, have already been signed. The State has also managed to rope in the private sector for work on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis.‘‘Since this state has limited rail communication links, roads are very important for development and connectivity to far-flung areas. It’s a priority sector and forms a part of infrastructure building,’’ says Shailesh Pathak, managing director of the Chhattisgarh Infrastructure Development Corporation. ‘‘It’s interesting to see Chhattisgarh going in for BOT projects. We are quite keen to join hands,’’ says K.Ramchand, president and CEO of Consolidated Toll Network India — a company which has already done BOT projects in Gujarat, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.The roads sector is expected to boom further with the government’s proposal to construct two North-South and four East-West corridors, which will measure about 3000 km and will link the state directly with its neighbours — Maharashtra, Orissa, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. At present, the state only has an East-West linkage. ‘‘The whole idea behind the new corridor is to criss-cross the state and let new economic activity take place in the areas which suffer extreme poverty and backwardness despite huge mineral deposits. We not only want roads for high-speed traffic on National Highways but want every village in the State to be connected. This will have a spin-off effect,’’ says Chief Minister Ajit Jogi.But the project has received its fair share of criticism too. Opposition BJP leaders allege large-scale corruption in the awarding of contracts. ‘‘The politician-engineer-contractor nexus is siphoning off the funds, mainly coming from the Centre. Firms are handpicked and the standard of quality is compromised,’’ alleges senior BJP MLA Mohan Aggarwal. Demanding a CBI inquiry into how the State has allegedly squandered away the central funds, he adds: ‘‘Because of the poor quality, the roads will go back to the same condition within a year.’’While admitting complaints about the poor quality and use of sub-standard material, PWD Secretary T.S. Chattwal, claims that all such allegations are taken seriously and inquired into. ‘‘Each complaint gets a prompt response. We send teams for spot verifications and I now have a mobile testing lab to check the quality,’’ he says.
