National Highway Asses of India

I have been travelling by road on the National Highway from Mumbai to Navsari regularly for the last two years. It was always a pleasure to drive in Gujarat as the qualitative difference in the highway tarmac once you passed from Maharashtra into Gujarat was telling. Maharashtra has always collected toll as a matter of right to make money and not for maintenance of roads which is the purpose for which tolls are collected. The Mumbai High Court has also passed strictures on the state government for collecting tolls without maintaining the roads. Gujarat used to be different – the roads were a carpet and the drive a pleasure – the drive to Navsari used to take about four hours as opposed to the bumps in Maharashtra. This was till about eight months ago, when the NHAI (National Highway Authority of India) in all its wisdom decided to start construction of the Mumbai-Delhi Industrial Corridor with the plan to construct bridges to enable flow of fast traffic. In principal, the idea is brilliant and I am not against infrastructure being developed and the associated pain during the execution phase of such projects. But the way the NHAI has dug up about 60km of road on a National Highway in the last eight months and no ongoing work visible, means that the drive now takes a painfully slow six to seven hours.

There is heavy container traffic as vehicles from Nhava Sheva Port use this highway which means continuous traffic jams. With a little more planning they could have completed the project in phases. Looks like this is a plan to scuttle Gujarat’s growth story by trying to slow it down, throwing its highway traffic system out of gear. We have petrol and diesel price rise on the one hand, and bad road planning on the other which results in a wasteful burning of fuel.

A better name for the NHAI should be the title to this note. Hopefully they will wake up and do what is right rather than what political expediency requires. Throughout history we have been done in by our own people – that continues to happen even today. When will we begin to believe in ourselves as a nation and stop parochial behavior which just results in pain to the masses! When will we learn to be a good, honest nation? Our people in power are more interested in lining their pockets rather than working for the larger public good, as their definition of public means themselves and their immediate family and friends.

Is it that we too require a revolution to demand a change in the way our country operates, as is now happening in the Middle East?