For Roads, Roads and More Roads

While The State is basking in the glory of having shot and killed suspected terrorists in New Delhi – recall that Sir William Sleeman and his men brought over 1000 thuggees to trial in a court of law – allow me to draw your attention to another area of stark State Failure:

Highways.

The news has it that the chairman of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has been fired. This is, if memory serves, the fourth chairman of NHAI to meet this fate under the UPA government. This guy lasted 11 months.

The news report ends with what the NHAI achieved under his stewardship: “four-laning of 437 kms on NHDP I in 2007-08 has seen only 49% completion.” They built 200 km of roads in one year. How many cars were bought in the same time?

The UPA government under the Great Czar of Central Planning does not think roads and highways are important. They are spending all the money elsewhere. And their attention is therefore elsewhere too.

In my book, roads and highways should be TOP PRIORITY.

We Pay Taxes For Roads.

And the NHAI charges tolls: double taxation.

The NHAI is also a monopoly.

What do we do?

At a public meeting the other day to launch my small monograph on automobilization in India, I suggested that we phone Angela Merkel and request her for the long-term services of her government’s highways department. There they have roads without speed limits. And many of us are now driving German cars. Why not get German roads too?

But jokes apart, the roads of Germany are the greatest “public asset” of the German people.

I would therefore recommend total privatization of all Indian PSUs to fund a German-quality road network in India – to be supplied to the people as a “public asset” funded by the commonwealth in the interest of common profit.

Further, all highway networks in the west, including Germany’s, date back to the 1940s and 50s. India must therefore build the latest kind of highways.

One great idea I came upon in Gabriel Roth’s new book, Street Smart, is “truckways”: highways dedicated to hauling freight.

We can have separate highways for cars.

Indeed, I would say that we need separate highways for fast cars. We also need separate free roads for all the lesser vehicles – and at the same time we must aim at universal automobilization.

Roads, roads and more roads: That is my “antidote.”