The Hindu Business Line : The slow road to progress

Noting that “work is on at full steam on the Golden Quadrilateral and the North-South-East-West corridors,” Mr Chidambaram had said, “96 per cent of the GQ will be completed by June (2006) and the corridors by end-2008.”

This is one promise the Finance Minister has not redeemed.

Look at his report in the Budget speech of February 29, this year.

“The completion ratio in the Golden Quadrilateral is 96.48 per cent and in the North-South-East-West project, it is 23.36 per cent.”

In February 2006, Mr Chidambaram contrasted the progress made under the UPA Government against under the NDA government saying: “As against 1.86 km per day completed prior to May 2004, the schemes are progressing at the rate of 4.48 km per day.”

In the latest Budget, he reports that 180 km of roads were completed in 2007-08 and the target for 2008-09 is 300 km.

These translate to 0.49 km per day in 2007-08 and 0.82 km per day in 2008-09.

As at end January 2005, under the GQ and Corridor schemes, (according to the Budget speech of that year), 5,172 km of roads were completed.

As at end January 2008, under the GQ 5,640 km and under the Corridor project 1,669 km have been completed.

Even assuming that all of the 1,669 km of the Corridor, came after January 2005, the total length added under the two projects in the last three years works out to 2,137 km — or, 1.95 km a day.

There has, however, been no dearth of funding. Annual allocation to the road projects has been steadily increasing.

How much of the allocation is actually spent, is not clear.

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