Rural Road Development

Abstract

Rural roads are the tertiary road system in total road network which provides accessibility for the rural habitations to market and other facility centre. In India, during the last five decades, rural roads are being planned and programd in the context of overall rural development, and tried to provide all-weather connectivity with some level of achievement. The long term road development plans for the country provided policy guidelines and priorities for rural roads, while the funds for rural roads were allocated in the Five Year Plans.

Recently, during the last five years Government of India has undertaken a dedicated program known as ‘Pradhan Mantra Gram SadakYojana(PMGSY)’ to provide rural connectivity to all habitations under the Ministry of Rural Development. More recently, Bharat Nirman, a time bound business plan adopted to provided rural infrastructure during 2005-09, rural roads have been to upgrade the existing rural roads for overall network development which is a

more objective approach.

To achieve the targets of Bharat Nirman, 1,46,185 km length of rural roads is proposed to be constructed to benefit 66,802 unconnected eligible habitations in the country. It is also proposed to upgrade nearly 1.94 lakh km length of th existing rural roads which are identified as the through routes of the coronet work. The total investment on rural connectivity under Bharat Nirman has been estimated at Rs. 48,000 crore during 2005-2009. Since 11th Five Year Plan

(2007-2011) goes beyond the targeted period of Bharat Nirman, assessment of physical targets and up graduation requirements, have been estimated based on the experiences of PMGSY.