Take the high road

Two good political reasons why highway project should be speeded up

The Golden Quadrilateral Project, and the wider project about highway construction, is still distinguished by slow and uneven progress. Whatever the reasons 8212; NHAI and private participants have been blaming each other for a while, there are issues about proposals to create complicated new regulatory structures 8212; the fact on the ground has two political messages for the government. First, since the new deadline for completing the high profile part of the highway project is 2008-2009, all ministers starting from the PM can hardly fail to see the link with elections. This government completes its term in 2009, if a substantive part of the highway project is open for general use by that time, an electoral slogan far more powerful than the ones Congress backroom strategists are cooking up will be available. Good roads

transform lives, they expand economic opportunities, they can provide a solid grounding for political campaign. It is mystifying really why the UPA has been politically non-receptive to this.

The other political message has a more immediate context. It cannot have escaped the government8217;s notice, especially the notice of economically liberal ministers, that a small but noisy and sometimes articulate group is now actively trying to create an anti-development narrative. Travelling protesters have visited various sites chosen for big infrastructure projects and the effort is to create some sort of popular backlash. While the attempt is still politically inchoate, smart pro-development politics would want to respond to this negativism now, via easily comprehensible arguments.

There8217;s no better argument than quickly building infrastructure projects that benefit everyone, especially the aam aadmi. Highways and roads are arguably the best example of this kind of positive, forward-looking political-economic argument. If the government can get the highway project really going, if results on the ground are visible in the next few months, the government would find that selling the idea of development projects at the popular level has become easier. That is surely a better strategy than postponing project clearance meetings out of political fear.