Highway plans hit roadblock

Hopes of enthusiastic private sector participation in the national highway development project have been belied as industry is not inclined to lock its funds in long-gestation projects. P.K. Bharadwaj and Sandeep Dikshit highlight the constraints.

WITH THE country having got into the liberalisation and globalisation mode, the importance of national highways as part of the overall infrastructure building exercise has not been lost on the Government. No wonder it has drawn up ambitious plans and is making serious efforts to execute them. Throwing open of this sector to private enterprise is very much part of the new strategy. The task is daunting and the hurdles are many.

The keenness of the Government to make a breakthrough can well be gauged from the fact that the Prime Minister during his Independence Day speech underlined the eagerness of his Government to turn the national highway network into a model to facilitate fast overall growth of the economy by attracting foreign investment. For, lack of infrastructure facilities, particularly the highways, is often seen as a stumbling block by foreign investors.

There are no soft options. The country has a very large and well spread out road network of over 3 million km but most of it is of very poor quality and needs massive investments to upgrade it in terms of carpet width and riding quality. The Ninth Plan has stressed on the need for ensuring accessibility to all villages with all weather roads and strengthening crucial segments of the national highways through removal of deficiencies and multi- laning the high density corridors.

Of the total road network, the length of the national highway segment which carries the bulk of goods and passengers is over 50,000 km. Most of the existing highways are only two-laned roads and are to be converted into four and six-lane pathways depending on the volume of traffic.

As if development of this colossal length is an easy job, the politicians are clamouring for declaration of stretches in their respective constituencies as national highways. The pressure from politicians to convert State highways into national ones is only adding to the Central Government's burden of keeping national highways in running condition. In the last three years alone, the unstable nature of the governments at the Centre has led to their acquiescing to convert over 17,000 km of State roads into national highways. The alacrity with which this was done can be gauged from the fact that the rate of conversion over the past three years alone is equal to the rate over the previous 50 years.

Notwithstanding the promises made by the Prime Minister and the Surface Transport Minister, Mr. Rajnath Singh, that the national highway development project (NHDP) will not be allowed to suffer for lack of funds, finding resources will ultimately prove to be an uphill task. Officials in the Ministry of Surface Transport unofficially agree that the resources would not be easy to come by. The investment called for will be over Rs. 30,000 crores. Till recently the Government had planned to depend on enthusiastic participation by the private sector. But this hope is fading fast.

It is universally acknowledged that investments on national highways will lead to a more efficient economy because the transit time for goods is reduced. While this factor is a strong incentive for the Government and policy planners to focus on the subject, it is not necessarily an attractive criterion for the private sector to lock up its money in such long gestation projects. The private sector will only be interested in those sections that would be commercially viable or attractive. As it is, the industry is learnt to be dragging its feet.

If the private sector is not too keen to take up entire lengths of national highways, preferring to focus on high density short stretches with promise of profitability, the Government's strategy is to offer them a mixed lot so that a social cause too is served side by side. However, there are no takers even for this proposition. The funds situation on the Government side is precarious although efforts are afoot to mobilise as much resources as possible.

In a major move to find resources, the Government has resorted to a cess on petrol and diesel. The collections are to be utilised for the development of national highways as well as the rural roads network. This could only see the Government through only partially. The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), set up to develop and strengthen national highways across the country, is the latest hope for the country's beleaguered life-line. It is planning another issue of bonds before September to mobilise funds. Though the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have come to the aid of the Authority for some projects, the NHAI is finding itself in a tricky situation. For, the Government is asking it to service the debt liability worth $ 700 millions taken as loan from these two multilateral institutions.

Unless the Government provides budgetary support, many national highway projects may get derailed and several others may remain non-starters. The Government is of course aware of the escalations that this kind of a situation would lead to and therefore is keen to strain itself a little to ensure that these projects do not get stuck. It is veering around to the view that it will have to shoulder the major part of the burden as in the past. It has come to accept the historical fact anywhere in the world that in the initial development of highway infrastructure, governments have a lead role to play.

In the past, the roads policy of the Government had taken several U-turns and suffered many false starts. An ambitious plan to link the four major metros through 10,000 km of expressways was abandoned after unknown international companies stipulated difficult and unacceptable terms and conditions. Then came the Golden Quadrilateral project with spurs and spokes touching every corner of the country. This project has now been tempered and the present plan is to restrict the upgradation to the north-south and east-west corridors besides the heavily traversed Golden Quadrilateral. Now it is being implemented as the Prime Minister's pet project and has aroused high hopes.

Apart from ensuring good riding quality of roads, the Government is seized of the other problems faced by highway users. It plans to modify the law to introduce an element of symmetry on the highways besides clearing it of encroachments, known as ``ribbon development'' in technical parlance. Also it proposes to take effective steps to prevent highway crimes and road accidents. It is keeping in touch with the states to devise a mechanism to effectively take care of problems relating to highways. Also on the agenda of the Government are steps to deal with the problem of overloading which erodes and destroys the roads even before the stipulated life-time. Overloading also contributes to higher accident rates apart from reducing the operational life of vehicles.

If the Government's plans do not fall through, no village will be more than 50 km away from the national highway network. It is a tall agenda but if realised it would be a feather in the cap of the Vajpayee Government.

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