In order to assess the exact number of village to be connected and the exact length of roads to be constructed/improved under the Scheme it will be necessary to have a complete list of Villages in each district in each State Showing how that village is connected at present. Compilation of such information for the entire country in such a short time may not be feasible at this stage. For the purpose of broad assessment, it will be better to use the available statistics. Fortunately, the Transport Research Wing of the Ministry of Surface Transport (MOST) has published Basic Road Statistics of the country for 1996-97 (Annexure-7). This publication contains information regarding the village connectivity for all the States. For villages with population of 1000 and above, information up to 31.03.1996 is available. For smaller villages information up to 31.03.1995

is available. These figures can very well be used. However, information regarding number of villages connected with black topped roads is not available in this publication. This information may be available with the State PWDs, at least in some cases.

An additional factor to be considered is that definition of all weather roads varies from state to state. In some states only black topped road is termed as an all-weather road while in some states a metalled road is called an all-weather road. There may be some areas where a murum road is called an all-weather road. It will, therefore, be necessary to refine the available figures to arrive at an acceptable figure for assessing the exact need. The problem is to identify those villages in the already connected ones which are without a black topped road. If we consider only the unconnected villages as per statistics mentioned above the total picture is as below: