National Rural Road Development Committee

 


km., the cost for black topping of existing WBM all-weather connections will be Rs. 29,000 crores. The total will be Rs. 30,680 crores, say Rs. 31,000 crores.

Some parts of the country like the North East, Jammu and Kashmir and some parts of states like U.P., Maharashra, M.P. have difficult hilly terrains. Provision of new village connections in this terrain would entail construction of ghat road. Some extra provision for this will be needed.

One criterion could be to connect only the villages with population of 500 and above. In Maharashtra out of a total of 39,522 villages, the number of village with population below 500 is 13,883 i.e., about 35% of the total villages have population less than 500. Out of these, 7,561 have all-weather connections and the rest 6,322 are either not connected or only have fair-weather connections.



(i) Providing all-weather black topped roads to all the 2,90,480 unconnected villages as on 31.3.2000 Rs. 1,11,000 crores.
(ii) Black topping the present metalled all-weather village approach roads of 1.45 lakh villages including a minor bridge per 5 villages. Rs. 31,000 crores.
(iii) Providing selected major bridges
(iv) Extra for ghat roads in case of hilly regions
(v) Administrative costs @ 10%
 Rs. 10,000 crores.
Rs. 11,000 crores.
Rs. 16,200 crores.
Grand Total Rs. 1,79,200 crores.
* Considering this magnitude it may perhaps be necessary to decide on certain criteria for connecting villages. Such criteria could be different for different types of terrains and areas like hilly areas, tribal areas, etc.

For the purpose of our calculations we may add 10% extra on the cost of unconnected village approach road on this account.

If we set apart a lump sum figure of Rs. 10,000 crores for some selected major bridges, the total cost would be (as shown in the table)

Thus, about 45% of the villages with population below 500 are unconnected. Of the total unconnected villages, 66% are with population below 500. If the same ratio is applied nationally, out of the total 3 lakh unconnected villages about 2 lakh villages will be in the population group of less than 500. we will then be left with only 1 lakh unconnected villages with population of