My Vision For India's Roads

In yesterday's post, I wrote about how the fiasco over the CONgresswealth Games illustrated how hopeless our Public Works Departments are. I joked about the need to import a PWD. Well, today there is a report in Mint that talks about our shoddy infrastructure, in which Indra Nooyi of Pepsico is quoted as saying:

If I use the word ‘appalling’, that would be a bit of an understatement...

The report talks about roads, electricity and water. In this post, I will focus on roads.

First: To privatize our highways, we need unilateral free trade as well as duty-free imports of used vehicles. This will give private businessmen the freight as well as traffic that they need to recover their huge investments in private highways.

Second: We in India do NOT need to develop highways like those in the West, which were all built in the 1940s and 50s. We can leapfrog into the latest and best. Thus, what we should first aim at are private "truckways" which are dedicated to hauling freight. Since most of India's freight is hauled by trucks, this will be a big hit - and truckways will sprout everywhere, thanks to the free trading scenario. These can all be shadow-tolled and truck companies can directly pay for their use of truckways. The private truckway owner can also decide on the quality of trucks to be allowed on his roads - thereby promoting modern multi-axle trucks that do not damage roads.

Third: Once trucks have been separated from the traffic stream, we need to think of modern roads for modern cars. These can be built by private highway operators on a Build-Operate-Own basis - and, once again, shadow tolls can pay for usage. All it requires is a tax on automotive fuels dedicated to a Road Fund. A small secretariat can handle the Road Fund and pay all the highway owners according to traffic carried.

Fourth: Wherever, because of low traffic expectations, private players are unwilling to build highways, this must become the job of The State. The funds to do so can come from wholesale privatization of the State-owned industrial sector. We need public money in roads, not steel plants, hotels and airlines - all loss-making, of course.

Fifth: To connect villages to market towns and to spread real estate development, we need local roads built, owned and maintained by local governments. I suggest that each district should have a Roads Commissioner who will be responsible for the task. This task should be constitutionally mandated. The constitution should state that each and every Property within India will be connected by a motorable, all-weather road, and the task will devolve upon the local district Roads Commissioner. The money can come from local taxes on Property - and Property titling will be the other constitutionally mandated task of the district administration.

Sixth: In urban areas, cities and towns, local roads and footpaths should be the constitutionally mandated task of Mayors, paid for by local taxes.

I think all this can be done without our malfunctioning PWDs and the ugly State highway monopolist, NHAI.

The "pattern" of these highways in a free market order will be one of "hubs-and-spokes" - that "natural" pattern of transport networks. The "golden quadrilateral" can be shelved. These basic roads linking the 5 metros will be surely built anyway, but there will also be coastal expressways, missed out by the State project of the "golden quadrilateral," which has emerged from the heads of planners and not businessmen.

This is my roads vision in brief. What do you think of it?