Roads - a way to progress...

I often travel to parts of Haryana and Punjab as part of my sales job and the experiences that i have been having in the past two years have been quite memorable. In 2006, the flyover from gurgaon to dhaula kuan was under construction and the traffic had to go from the only narrow roads available through mahipalpur. It was a task in itself to travel from delhi to gurgaon or vice verse. If one lived in gurgaon and had to catch a flight at the Indira Gandhi National Airport, one must leave at least two hours in advance. Sometime in 2007, the flyover was complete and it was opened to public. When the flyover opened, I had shifted to Mumbai already and hence I got a flavour of this wonderful highway only after my return to Gurgaon in late 2007. The journey from Gurgaon to Dhaula Kuan in Delhi was reduced from 2 hours to mere 30 minutes (or less) now. I had to catch a flight and from my house in Sector 45 in Gurgaon, I reached Airport in just 20 minutes and my joy knew no bounds. The journey to Delhi also became much easier. Today I can reach the new delhi railway station in about 30-40 minutes in early morning from gurgaon and that it mostly because of the wonderful highway built in air.

I normally travel to Haryana by a taxi and till recently it was a pain to cross Panipat. The place has very narrow roads with shops on both sides of the roads. The shops accentuate the traffic and the auto-rickshaws and state buses completely bring the road to a halt. Going from Gurgaon to Karnal via Delhi, Sonepat and Panipat meant at least 5-6 hours. Then the flyover over Panipat was completed sometime in 2008 and the journey has become at least a couple of hours less. Barring the internal traffic of Delhi, the journey from Gurgaon to Karnal is today reduced to 4 hours and sometimes even 3.5 hours.

These roads have just not eased travel for personal purposes, but mostly they ave helped the various businesses grow because of the faster transportation of goods. Punjab and Haryana anyways fare better than rest of the northern (and other Indian) states in terms of per capita income and the general health of trade and business. But these roads have helped Punjab and Haryana get connected with Delhi on a more regular basis and has increased trading and other businesses tremendously.

The roads of Punjab are also one of the good roads one sees. Especially those connecting villages to the main cities. Even the journey through a state bus is more comfortable than a car journey from Gaya to Patna in Bihar. Somewhere, the poor condition of Bihar has also to do with the bad roads. The mode of transport is so poor that most of the journeys are at least 12 hours long with narrow roads and narrower bridges in the way. As if the width of the roads was not a problem big enough that the condition of the road surface is also equally bad. The connectivity to the nearest Metropolitan Kolkata is an a dilapidated state and one hardly finds four lanes or six lanes flyovers and highways in the way. UP is no different, though I have heard that some roads have become really nice in recent past, especially the ones between Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Lucknow and Agra.

The development of good roads with defined lanes and sufficient flyovers to avoid congestion is a key to fast economic progress and Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat are a testimony to that. Hilly areas have been struggling mostly because of this, though the condition of roads in Himachal and Jammu has improved a bit while Uttaranchal shares the fate of UP. Kashmir though is lucky to have most of its roads made by BRO (Border Roads Organisations) which has made some of the finest roads near North Kashmir and Leh-Ladakh. The NHAI has also launched various projects and the half-way-through Golden quadrilateral is a dream come true for India. I sincerely wish that the overly politicised areas of UP and Bihar where caste comes before education and one's district is more important than one's source of income, only the good connectivity of wide-laned roads can bring the waves of change, first on an economic level and later on a social level. The state government must focus on building good rural roads and connecting them to the district towns on well connected and well maintained pucca road. There is also a need to make river bridges over Ganga and Kosi and this time wider ones with six or eight lanes. The one that was completed in Bhagalpur has improved the connectivity of the nearby villages and small towns to Bhagalpur immensely. But then it took 10-15 years to be completed and such speed of action is not desirable.

The NHAI and BRO are the organisations that are know for faster and efficient execution of plans, but it is the state road construction bodies which need to break the shackles of bureaucracy and start functioning like a real estate developer focusing mostly on better rural roads and flyover over major state highways. Well, I am hopeful that such thoughts must have crossed the people seated at the decisive positions and they will act promptly to show India a path of fast paced progress.

Bihar - what a wonder....

On the day of Maha shivaratri, I was on a fast and trying to deviate myself from the hunger, I decided to read something. I picked up the Geography of India and went on to read chapter by chapter. To my surprise I read some 10-11 chapters in a day. It was a non-stop affair of at least 10 hours. While going through the chapters on climate, land forms, rivers, disaster managements, people of India and several such chapters, state wise data was something that kept cropping up. With 28 states and 7 union territories, it was difficult to remember which was the highest rice producing state and which state had the largest reserves of coal. But, in every sheet of data, I could not miss out looking for Bihar. On the table of population, I saw that Bihar is the third most populous state of the country after Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra and also one of the states with a very high density of population. It reminded me of the crowded buses in Bihar. On the chart of literacy, the data was alarming. We are last in the list of states on literacy , both in male literacy and female literacy. The infant mortality rate was highest and the %age of malnourished children the maximum. With every new data that came up, the situation kept becoming more dismal. On the list of agricultural produce, we ranked a little better in some items but were far behind in many. It was only in the list of mineral resources that we fared better. But, to be more precise, all those mineral resources are in Jharkhand now and the book had not updated itself fully.

The most disturbing fact remained about the floods of Kosi. I was surprised to know that floods due to the river Kosi are an annual phenomenon and that there are also huge embankments made on the river sides to prevent the floods. Every year hundreds of people of the Mithila region lose life and property owing to the floods by Kosi. And when Kosi is milder, Ganga fills the gap and there is probably no year that Bihar hasn't seen floods. Having spent most of my life in Bokaro, which is a part of Jharkhand now, I can't imagine such a tough life being a reality. Agriculture and labour work related to agriculture seems to be the major occupation of Bihar's villages and it is no wonder that the lack of proper infrastructure forces these labourers to flee to the areas of Delhi, Punjab and Haryana for job. The plight to Mumbai has also grown in recent years. Whenever I am on a rickshaw in Gurgaon, the rickshaw puller is a Bihari 9 out of 10 times. He tries to speak the Delhi accent but the originality reflects in a few sentences and I can always say that he is a Bihari.

Undoubtedly, there are problems in Bihar, and that people run away from their homes for better life. But when the time of marriage season comes and the time of harvesting of crops, you see the number of rickshaw pullers and the house-maids suddenly reducing. All the bihari folks go bakc home. Despite being away from their homes for so long, they haven't still forgotten their roots. They board those owercrowded trains and happily go back to their villages in Gaya, Madhubani, Chhapra and other places. When they return from their homes taking the same crowded trains back to delhi and ludhiana, they bring back with them the litties full of sattu, chooda for their breakfasts and the aroma of the local spices. They are full of energy and joy and are ready to get to this life of labour and wage all over again. Despite so many problems in Bihar, people are still moving on. No one frowns and no one complains. Don't know if that's a good thing or not, but it sure is a wonder to me.