The Hindu Business Line : Wide variations in rural transport cost

A major roadblock that India's rural roads face is financial constraints. "Central funds for building roads have not been increasing at the desired rate, and State Governments have not been able to expand their revenue base to meet the operation and maintenance costs of even the existing roads," notes the India Rural Infrastructure Report, of the NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research), published by Sage (www.indiasage.com).

It is not as if the Budget allocation from the Centre didn't grow. The amount almost tripled during the 1990s; yet, the increase was not adequate. The total rural road length during 1990-97 increased only 15 per cent, says the Report.

What about the State Governments? "Only around 5 per cent of state PWD (Public Works Department) budget is spent on road maintenance," observed the World Bank a few years ago. Much of the State Governments' funds "are diverted towards looking after state highways and other district roads and paying staff salaries," NCAER finds.

A different problem is the poor `intra-village connectivity'. This arises owing to the Central Government's approach to building roads, one learns. How so? Roads are built based on population density, and so roads have been laid `to the main settlements of most villages, but not to the hamlets of these villages'.

The Council's field studies have discovered `considerable variations in road connectivity and the use of rural transport'. While villagers in Kerala have `an enviable accessibility of 0 km to all-weather roads,' their counterparts in West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh aren't so lucky; for they must travel `on average more than 3 km to reach all-weather roads'.

Interesting statistics are that "about 42 per cent of village households have at least one member commuting daily, who travels an average distance of 3-4 km, pays a flat tariff and spends a daily average of Rs 6-20 per trip, depending on the mode of transport."

Kerala, again, boasts of the lowest passenger costs, at Rs 2 per passenger trip. Next is Tamil Nadu, at Rs 3, but in Punjab, the cost is more than seven times that much, at Rs 21.49! Reason for this wide variation is due to the relative popularity of public and private transport, says the Report. In goods transport, too, the range is broad. "Tamil Nadu exhibits the lowest cost per goods trip of Rs 6.86, which is around 8 per cent of the corresponding figure in Punjab."

Usefully, the Report suggests `a new approach' to tackle the rural road problem, based on field studies, estimates of required investment, and data on consumer profile from the `Indian Market Demographics Report', a 2003 publication of the NCAER.

D. Murali

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