India Shrugged.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers report: Building Strong Partnerships and India: A Manufacturing Destination Key Opportunities point out significantly the mammoth Manufacturing Genius of this Country.

India has an existing road network of more than 3.3 million km, which is the second largest in the world. This is, though lower than USA which has the largest road network of about 6.3 million km significantly more than China which has a road network of about 1.4 million km. India has 110 km of road length available per 100 sq. km, far exceeding the corresponding figures of 68 km per Sq. km and 15 km per Sq. km for USA and China respectively. Similarly, India has 3,064 km of roads per million of population which is although lower than corresponding figure of 22,064 km per million population for USA, is significantly higher than that of China at 1,072 km per million population.

In India, the fact that National Highways and State Highways together constitute about 6% of the road network and carry about 80% of the total traffic, clearly emphasizes the importance of National Highways and State Highways. On the other hand District roads and Village roads together constitute 94% of total road network and carry only about 20% of total traffic. Irrespective of this, their importance cannot be underestimated as District Roads and Village Roads are important from connectivity point of view.

Road network in India requires major initiatives for enhancing its capacity. Only 12% of the National Highways are four-lane with two-lane and single-lane being 50% and 38% respectively. State Highways have lower capacity, with only 0.7% of total State Highway length being four-lane and corresponding percentage for two-lane and single-lane being 20.3% and 79% respectively.

Such huge funds requirement cannot be met entirely from the government’s budgetary resources, loans from multilateral agencies and Central Road Fund alone and, therefore, an increased level of private sector participation in the development, operation and maintenance of the road projects has been planned. In this direction, NHDP Phase III to NHDP Phase VII have been planned on (Build-Operate-Transfer) BOT basis. BOT projects are transferred back to the government at the end of the pre-determined concession period. During the concession period, the private developer recovers his cost and earns a return on investment through tolls and budgetary support. The NHAI is also beginning to experiment with private sector participation in road maintenance for completed NHDP stretches. The move could herald the beginning of a new era in road maintenance.

Road sector in India is seeing a lot of activity and one can expect this level of activity to carry on in future. There are ambitious targets set by Government and those targets can be met if issues from this sector are suitably addressed and if role of private sector is enhanced in road construction, operations and maintenance.