Road sense

The Chinese have been investing on their roads for over a decade and a half now and, today, China has an expressway length that is at least 15 times that of India. Now we have it on the excellent authority of the country8217;s deputy minister of communications himself that Beijing has set itself a target of building another one million kilometres of highway by 2020 and hopes to move 20 billion tonnes of goods on its highways annually. The Chinese have never lacked ambition when it comes to forward planning, and nothing highlights this better than the clear synchronisation between the targets set for goods movement and the projected expansion of highways.

Growth needs roads to run on. The Chinese discovered this almost as soon as Deng Xiaoping8217;s famous cat of indeterminate colour began to eat mice briskly, back in the early nineties. India got on to that highway rather later, since it takes a while to shed the old contractor raj-PWD mindset. Even to this day progress is not exactly impressive. The proposed four-laning of the Golden Quadrilateral, connecting the four metros and running through 13 states, is still limping along, while connectivity with the hinterland remains largely a dream. National highways account for less than 2 per cent of the total road network of the country but are today catering to 40 per cent of goods and passengers.

This way lies future gridlock. Yet there is very little anxiety about the state of Indian roads 8212; either on the part of the political class or the administrators. The well-publicised shenanigans of H.D. Deve Gowda and his one-time chief minister son over the Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project is an eloquent case in point. They ensured that an agreement signed by an earlier government was put in the backburner, and Karnataka lost out on a crucial road project. What this country lacks, according to experts, is an overarching vision on its road infrastructure. The approach, thus far, has been far too piecemeal and disconnected to be useful. We could do with some of that famous

Chinese road sense.