Expanding National Highways Is Not The Road To The Future
Author:
First published in Sanctuary Asia,
Vol. 31
No. 1,
January 2011
One may ask what is wrong with the idea, as these roads will connect villages and make travelling within cities better. But specifically, these are not village or city roads; these are highways and they are not being built, but are being expanded. A four-lane highway is being turned into a six-lane.
The first question is: Why is the government spending so much on national highways when the common man rarely uses them? India has the world's second largest road network at around 33,00,000 km of roads; national highways constitute just 70,548km or around 2%. The government intends to spend Rs100,000 crore on sprucing up 2% of India's roads! Of course, it must be noted that the national highways are important for the movement of goods, since they carry 50% of the country's freight. Read the full report here.
Source: Yatish Rajawat, DNA.
