Amitabh
Shukla
You
cannot have a decent quality life anywhere in the country without quality
roads: Whether you go to school or cycle to work, whether your trip is on the
tractor to the local mandi or a long drive in a sleek car...
For
a lot of fellow citizens, the vast expanse of black bitumen on roads, unbroken
and serpentine stretches, with wide expanses of the countryside and the hills
unfolding, sends the adrenaline pumping. Ask those who travel on many bitumen
wonders or highways of the country and they will swear by the excitement
driving on them has to offer.
Driving
is not only a stress buster but also a learning experience. Nature, people,
aspirations, food, culture, society, the economy… you name it. Being based in
Chandigarh is of great help when planning a long drive due to its geographical advantage
— it lies in the foothills of the Shivalik range and the great Indian plain
ends here. The joint capital of Punjab and Haryana is perched on the edge of
the vast expanse of the Indo-Gangetic belt, the mainstay of Indian agriculture
since the Indus Valley Civilization. So, one has the best of both geographical
worlds, the hills and the plains, in front of one, a diversity which is rare in
any part of the world.
I
may be a travel junkie and love driving for the fun of it plus I can select
very good highways in the vicinity to hit the road, but for a majority of the
people in the country the use of roads is an everyday necessity. You cannot
have a decent quality life anywhere in the country without quality roads.
Whether you go to school or cycle to work, whether you go to the local mandi on
your tractor to offload your produce in a bullock cart or whether you are on a
road trip in a sleek car. In many ways, the first contact of a citizen with the
effectiveness or lack thereof of a Government is the road s/he uses to get from
Point A to Point B.
The
National Highway I, for example, which connects Delhi to the two prosperous
States of Punjab and Haryana, takes you to Himachal Pradesh on the one hand and
Jammu & Kashmir on the other. There would hardly be any decision-maker in
the Capital or in the four northern States who must not be using this road for
travel purposes. The stretch between Panipat and Jalandhar should have been
converted into six-lane in 2011 but it was left to the Supreme Court to issue
directions to the concessionaire which ensured the completion of the project
only recently.
This
project should now be used as a case study in school management how not to
build new road projects. It should also be used as a case study to give
contracts for other road projects so that they do not get into legal wrangles
and cost over runs. Drive ahead to Jalandhar in Punjab and one would find a
major flyover stuck in legal mess for years together on the national highway.
Every motorist, who use the highway, curse the authorities as it spoils the
pleasure of their journey.
Further,
there’s yet another expressway which should have been built years ago — the
much awaited Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) expressway — which is expected to
reduce vehicular congestion and as a result, pollution in the Capital but has
perpetually been under construction with one legal issue or the other cropping
up every time. This can be yet another case study of a project in the
management of schools with the chapter saying: How not to build a road; KMP
case study!
What
perplexes me the most is that most national highways have perpetually been
under construction since years. Most of them are being six-laned. Two decades
back, the National Highways Authority of India
was under the process of converting the highways into four-lanes. I
wonder whether construction and widening would be a permanent feature of the
roads. Half a decade from now, the need will be of eight-lane roads and maybe
15-20 years down, the volume of traffic may force the authorities to have
20-lane roads.
One
fails to understand what prevents the authorities from constructing 12-lane
roads straight away in important stretches, keeping in view the traffic
scenario of 2040? It does not require rocket science to know that the number of
vehicles on roads keep increasing everyday and vehicles need space to move. I
am sure after the six-laning of NH-8, which goes to Jaipur and Mumbai, the need
will again be to make eight-laned roads in the next five years and then
10-laned roads in another 15 years from now. Why not build it today itself? If
it’s not planned today, construction activities will continue all the time and
one will hardly find a 200-250 km of expressway free from construction or
broadening activities.
The
Ambala-Zirakpur (Chandigarh) stretch was four-laned only six years ago and
already the need is being felt to widen it to six-lane with multi-storied
housing complexes coming in vicinity of Chandigarh and accompanying vehicles
clogging the road. What worsens the situation is the fact that whenever a new
stretch of road comes up, there is heightened economic activity around it.
Housing colonies are built, shops, eateries and small scale establishments come
up and even rural population shifts towards the road to take benefit of the new
economic activity.
In
the last few years, there has been hectic construction activity on NH from
Delhi to Amritsar, Delhi to Jaipur and Delhi to Lucknow via Moradabad and
Bareilly. Shifting of economic activity in and around the roads will lead to a
situation where only a few stretches alongside the highway will be left for
paddy or mustard fields as the remaining space will be gobbled up by commercial
activities.
Coming
back to the joy of travelling on the road, nothing can beat the hilarious shop
sign — ‘child bear’ sold here. It’s only when you take the kids to see the baby
bear and are confronted by a liquor shop selling ‘chilled beer’ that the truth
dawns.
Trucks,
however, rule the roost when it comes to innovative slogans. Most slogans
appeared like works of fledgling litterateurs, who could not get their work
published and, had rather taken to writing slogans on trucks as a career!
Himmat hai to aage nikal, warna bardasht kar (If you are brave enough, overtake
me, otherwise tolerate me), warned one frightening slogan. I was brave enough
and overtook the truck without any fuss. The driver merely brought out an
extended palm from the window of his huge vehicle and facilitated the overtake
without taking the slogan written on his truck seriously.
Imagination
ran wild in the case of some slogans. Recently, on a trip to Shimla, I thought
the owner of one of the trucks or its driver was using abusive language when
the slogan at the back said, Teri Ma ki. However, in equally bold letters
followed Jai Ho. So, the entire slogan read: Teri Ma ki jai ho. I never came
across such a slogan anywhere!
Another
slogan said, Amiro ki zindagi biscuit aur cake par, driver ki zindagi clutch
aur brake par. There were hundreds more. Tata phir milenge and buri nazar wale
tera muh kala seemed to be written on maximum number of trucks and read like a
national slogan of the big Indian beast that were the trucks with number plates
identifying vehicles from far and wide including Orissa, West Bengal, Haryana,
Rajasthan, Punjab to Gujarat, Maharashtra and Kerala.
One
fuel station on NH 1 was giving a bathing soap free for every 100 litres of
diesel and the limit was 400 litres. Half a dozen of trucks and their drivers
were lazing around early morning in the vicinity of the fuel station, giving an
indication that marketing strategy indeed worked.
At
another, if a driver had to use a clean toilet, he had to fill in fuel first.
Fill the tank, get a slip and then show it to the guard in front of the toilet
to ease yourself. Another private fuel station had kept a log book of the
diesel filled in by a particular vehicle in a month. The prizes were good-set
of steel glasses for 1,000 litres, briefcase for 2,000 litres, branded shirt so
on and so forth. Business on roads has
become quite innovative over the months and years. Knowing about it is the perk
of road travel. (17 Dec, 2017)
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