Highway projects mow down ecolaws
“Speedy development comes at a price,” said Prime Minister (pm) Atal Bihari Vajpayee, dedicating the 43-kilometre (km) stretch of the Ahmedabad-Vadodara National Expressway-1 to the nation on January 28, 2003. While the pm was alluding to toll tax collection, experts have pointed out that the Union government’s natio nal highway project is actually taking a heavy toll on local ecologies.
Since the pm has evinced personal interest in the ambitious road-networking plan, it is perhaps the only government project that is progressing ahead of schedule. But there are several instances of environmental guidelines either being waived or flouted to facilitate this fast-track implementation: be it on the outskirts of Chennai in Tamil Nadu (tn) or in the interiors of Orissa.
The ongoing schemes aim to connect all habitations in the country by the end of the tenth five-year plan. These include the National Highways Development Project (nhdp), which will link the urban parts, and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (pmgsy) for the rural areas. According to the National Highways Authority of India (nhai), mandated to execute the nhdp, “Never before in the history of India has road construction work been undertaken on such a large scale, except by 16th century ruler Sher Shah Suri whose brainchild was the Grand Trunk Road.”
Paving the way Roads are the lifelines of India, with 85 per cent of passengers using them. The country’s national highways cover 58,112 km and state highways stretch across 1,37,119 km. Major district roads span 4,70,000 km and rural roads extend over 26,50,000 km. Though national highways form only two per cent of the total network yet they bear over 40 per cent of the total traffic load.
To deal with this constraint, the pm launched various road projects. One such scheme, the nhdp, was flagged off in 1998 (see: The roadmap ). Its objective is to “develop roads of international standards with facilities for uninterrupted flow of traffic”. It has two components