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The development of any nation depends upon the transportation network and the ways in which they are being maintained. This is especially true for large country like Bharat.
For connecting the areas and maintaining the smooth flow of traffic, the construction of new and developed roads are essential.
For decades, the connectivity with our interior areas was troublesome as the pucca roads were not constructed which would connect the urban developed areas with interior, remote corners. The internal destination remained disconnected with developed locales, which was the foremost cause of lopsided development in our nation.
During Shri Narendra Modiji’s tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat, his emphasis on revamping the interior connectivity across state, has been the root source of noteworthy development of Gujarat state.
As soon as Narendra Modiji led Government took the reins of central Government, re-structuring of transportation mediums, strengthened the route to developmental process.
On the 31st July 2015, Hon. Prime Minister initiated BharatMala Pariyojna with an aim to improve the road network in the country. BharatMala Pariyojna was announced by Shri. Nitin Gadkari, the Minister of Road Transport and Highways, in presence of Hon. Prime Minister. BharatMala Pariyojna is a new umbrella program for the highways sector that focuses on optimising efficiency of freight and passenger movement across the country by bridging critical infrastructural gaps through effective interventions like development of Economic Corridors, Inter Corridors and Feeder Routes, National Corridor Efficiency improvement, Border and International connectivity roads, Coastal and Port connectivity roads and Green-Field expressways. The ambitious Umbrella program has subsume all existing Highway projects including the flagship National Highway Development Project (NHDP), launched by Former Prime Minister Late A B Vajpayee.
The project has covered whopping 83,677 km of the road and it would be completed in phased manner. The budget for the project would be managed by the cess collected on Petrol and Diesel and tax collected on toll booths, apart from the budgetary allocation by the Government.
The Government would mobilise resources for BharatMala Pariyojna through four different routes.
a) Market borrowings
b) Central Road Fund
c) Monetizing Government-owned Road assts
d) Budgetary allocation
The total investment for 83,677 km committed new highways is estimated at Rs. 692,324 Lakh Crores (US $ 97 Billion), making it the largest outlay for government road construction scheme.
Due to sheer magnitude and large scale spread of the scheme, it would be divided in seven distinct phases.
The first phase is schedule to get completed by 2022, which would cover 24,800 km.
The first phase would also include 10,000 kms of balance road works under NHDP, launched by Vajpayee Government, taking the total to 34,800 kms at an estimated cost of 5,35,000 ($75 Billion) Crore.
The project would build highways from Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and then cover the entire string of Himalayan states Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and then portions of borders of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar alongside Terai and move to Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and right up to the info-Myanmar border in Manipur and Mizoram.
Special emphasis would be given on providing connectivity to far flung border and rural areas including the tribal and backward areas.
The components of BharatMala Pariyojna are :
a) Development of Economic Corridors - 9000 kms.
b) Coastal and Port Connectivity roads - 2000 km
c) Expressways - 800 kms
d) Balance of NHDP works - 10,000 kms.
e) Improving the efficiency of National Corridors -5000 kms
BharatMala project would interconnect 550 district headquarters (from current 300) through a minimum four lane highway by raising the number of Corridors to 50 (from current 6) and move 80% freight traffic (40 % currently) to National Highways, by interconnecting 24 Logistic Parks, 66 inter-corridors (IC) of total 8000 km, 116 feeder routes (FR) of total 7,500 km and 7 North East Multi-Modal waterways ports.
The BharatMala project envisions to improve the National Corridor including the Golden Quadrilateral and North, South-East West Corridor by decongesting the choke points through the construction of elevated corridors, bypasses, ring roads, lane expansion and logistics parks at identified points.
The project plan includes the construction of Border Roads of strategic importance along international boundaries and international connectivity roads to promote trade with Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.
The programme has identified 26,200 kms of Economic Corridors or routes that have heavy freight traffic. It has planned ensuring development of seamless, speedy travel and uniformity in standards on the identified heavy freight traffic routes on the Economic Corridors. Feeder Corridors are being developed to address the existing infrastructure asymmetry.
All projects implemented under BharatMala would be technically, financially and economically appraised by an empowered Project Appraisal & Technical Scrutiny Committee set up in National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH).
Sagarmala Pariyojna would improve connectivity with North Eastern states, which till beginning of Modiji led Government had been the neglected region, with least connectivity and hence, poor growth opportunities had taken toll on not just economical development of North Eastern states but it had socially as well as emotionally caused disconnect in hearts of people of the region with other fellow countrymen. BharatMala Pariyojna would work to break such barriers and bring the remotest corner of the nation closer to the rest of the nation.
In order to complete the project in time, the respective departments have made efforts to constructing at least 18 km of road on a daily basis. To beat the clock, continued efforts are being made to raise it to 30 km/day.
The project is expected to generate about 14.2 Crore man-days of employment.
The BharatMala Pariyojna is sure shot way to bring about new wave of development in the nation in the form of well maintained and developed roads.
The visionary Prime Minister’s dedicated efforts has sown seeds of Naya Bharat (New India). The endeavor by Narendra Modiji and Team Modi ji will certainly lead Bharat, on the path of ascending journey.