Now Bihar has roads to drive development

PATNA - Octogenarian farmer Madhav Singh is a happy man these days. Though his village Alawalpur is only 12 km away from Bihar’s capital, it used to take him over two hours of travel each way for his weekly shopping and farm chores. Not any longer.

The state’s motto, “aap ki sarkar, aap ke dwaar” (your government at your doorstep), is visibly bearing fruit, contributing significantly to the state’s unprcedented growth — a blisterting 16.59 percent last fiscal, against the national average of 7.2 percent.

“Three years ago, I had to walk three kilometres to reach the nearest pucca (all-weather) road to catch a bus to Patna. During rains, I had to wade through chest-deep water and cross the Punpun river on boat to catch the bus,” said Madhav Singh.

“Now, I am in Patna in half an hour, at most,” he said. “We have a pucca road right till our village. There is also an all-weather bridge across the Punpun. Buses and taxis reach till our doorsteps,” the 82-year-old retired police officer told IANS.

Thanks to the road development schemes of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, people of Bihar are now realising what was promised by his predecessor Lalu Prasad two decades ago — roads as smooth as the cheeks of yesteryear star Hema ‘Dream Girl’ Malini.

The facts speak for themselves.

In the past four years alone, the state has laid over 25 percent of the road network added since independence. The total length of pucca roads across the state stands at 46,107 km - of which nearly 9,500 km has been built since 2006-07.

“We also built and carpeted nearly 65 percent of the existing 30,000 km of rural roads in less than five years. Pucca village roads were virtually non-existent till about five-six years ago,” said Rural Works Department Secretary Sashi Sekhar Sharma.

“Now, our mandate is clear. We want to our road network to interconnect every farming field, rural market, district, town and city. Our target is to have an all-weather motorable road to each village by 2012-13,” Sharma told IANS.

Even in the capital, the roads have vastly improved. Auto driver Raghav Ram says he not only covers distances within the city faster but also manages a few more rounds on his hired vehicle — adding more to his family income.

“Earlier, the 10-km stretch from the railway station to Agam Kuan (in the city’s old quarters) would take 90 minutes. The road was full of potholes, congested. Now, 15-20 minutes, and I am there,” Ram told IANS, looking visibly pleased.

The spurt in road building activity can also be gauged by the fact that in 2005-06, the outlay for the relevant department was just Rs.594.73 crore, while the expenditure was lower at Rs.263.23 crore — indicating gross under-utilisation of earmarked funds.

Five years since then, the outlay and expenditure are evenly matched at Rs.3045.65 and Rs.3045.03, respectively. The very year after Nitish Kumar took over as chief minister (Nov 24, 2005), the outlay was tripled, and has been constantly enhanced.

“We are utilising every rupee allocated under schemes such as the Chief Minister’s Rural Roads Project or the Chief Minister’s Bridge Development Scheme,” said Road Construction Department Secretary Pratyay Amrit during an interview.

“The fact is Bihar has enough roads today to move forward, and fast.”

(Rana Ajit can be reached at rana.ajit@ians.in and biz@ians.in)