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A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF ROAD ACCESSIBILITY IN RURAL AREAS

N. Naganna (Dr), Associate Professor
T. V. Ramanayya (Dr), Assistant Professor
Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore

ABSTRACT

The objective of the paper is to analyze and understand the board implications of the issue of accessibility in rural road planning, the paper highlights that a large segment of population still remains inaccessible to the in-roads of economic development planning. It brings out the fact the the smallness of the village size coupled with their large numbers and also with a wide geographical scatter over large tracts is the major deterrent for any large scale investment on rural road development with a fair level of accessibility patterns. It brings forth the deficiencies of our rural transport system like-imposition of western transport system on the Indian geographical settings which is totally different, to neglect accessibility in the transport planning, etc.

The paper suggests a geographical approach to assess the need, to identify the accessibility points as also to priorities them such that the total benefits accruing out of investments on accessibility will be maximum. The paper attempts to formulate a general policy framework for rural road planning in which the accessibility issue enters explicitly. It is also suggested to set up an apex body to care of various problems concerning with the rural road planning and development.

Introduction

1.1 The objective of the present paper is to analyze and understand the broad implication of the issue of accessibility in rural road planning in the context of the developmental efforts made in the rural areas ever since the start of the economic planning in the country. the issue is the complex one in nature, With far reaching effects on the quality of rural life and the socio-economic system prevailing in the rural areas. The paper is divided into three sections. Section I highlights the issue of accessibility in rural areas along with its broad dimensions. Section II deals with the issue of accessibility and suggests a geographical approach to the problem. Section III attempts to formulate a policy framework for rural roads planning which also includes the issue of accessibility.

Section I: Accessibility in Rural Areas -- State of Art

The cognizance of the need, the importance and the part played by the transport systems to usher in new forces for economic development goes back to a early as 1927 with the appointment of what is generally known

as the Jayakar Committee (1927). This Committee felt that a good rural road system is essential for the general welfare of the country as a whole and in particular:

for the betterment of marketing facilities to the agricultural produce

for the social and political progress of the rural population, which will further be enhanced by the increased use of motor transport.

Thus, the need for road accessibility for our scattered villages, and as complement to railways, was recognized way back in 1920's. However, there still remains much to be done this front. Consequent upon the Jayakar Committee recommendations, two twenty-year road developmental schemes, known as the Nagpur plan and the Bombay plan were formulated. In these plans, the envisaged targets were not realistic in relation to the needs of the rural areas. this resulted in the loss of comparison between targets and achievements in a meaningful way. Both the Nagpur plan and the Bombay plan laid more emphasis on lying of new roads rather than on accessibility patterns.

As a result of poor road conditions and low accessibility of settlements, it is estimated that the country is losing about Rs. 300 crores (at 1978 prices) annually on fuel consumption alone. In a similar way, it can be noticed from the five year plan documents that percentage share in the total plan expenditure spent on roads, has declined considerably from 6.7 percent 1951-56 to 3.5 percent during 1980-85. this justifies the need for additional resources on roads development and accessibility.

The distinctive feature of our country is that it has large number of small villages (5.8 lakhs) with about the 75 percent of the country's total population in them; and scattered geographically all over the vast country. The size distribution of the settlement is given below:

Table 1 Size distribution of settlements (1971)

Size ClassTotal number of
settlementsPercentage

Less than 500318,63655.3

500-999132,99023.1

1000-199981,97314.2

2000-499936,0056.3

5000-99994,9740.8

10000 & above1,3580.2

Total575,936100.0

The above evidence has significant implications in rural roads planning. Our villages are so small that roughly 78 percent of them have less than a thousand population. The size of the villages become a major consideration while making capital investments on roads in rural areas. It is not conducive factor in our country. It becomes a hindrance from two points of view. First, is the problem of scale effects; second, is the problem of lower rates of road utilization, perhaps resulting in lower rates of return on investments. This implies that the conventional economic approach may not be an appropriate one in justifying the required investments on rural roads development and their accessibility patterns.

As against the settlements size, the table below gives the broad dimensions of accessibility/connectivity among the villages.

The evidence above indicates that out of a total of about 5.8 lakh villages in the country, only 1.68 lakh (or 29.3 percent) villages are connected (or accessible)

Table 2 Accessibility/connectivity among the villages

Size ClassTotal numberConnected byYet to be connected by

of villages AWRFWRAWRFWR

Less than 1000451,632107,92569,062343,707274,645

1000-150054,62322,9859,81631,63821,822

1500 & above575,936168,63992,827407,297314,470

Legend: AWR - All Weather Road;

FWR - Fair Weather Road

Source: Report of the National Transport Policy Committee (NTPC);

Government of India, 1980.

by the all weather roads while 0.93 lakh (or 16.1 percent) villages are connected by the fair-weather-roads. Thus, it is evident that only 45.4 percent of the total number of villages in the country are connected by the road networks. The remaining large chunk of 54.6 percent of the total villages are yet to be provided with the road network of some type or the other - a basic infrastructural facility. Indeed, the problem is very acute because a large segment of population still remains inaccessible to the in-roads of economic development planning. It is estimated that about 8 lakh kms of additional road length is required to link all the villages by some kind of road network or the other. to achieve this objective, the estimated financial requirements at 1979 price level are of the order of about Rs. 11,000 crores. Besides, this will also have annual maintenance costs. According to the norms laid down by the Minimum Needs Programme (MNP), it is suggested that all the villages with a population of above 1500 and 50 percent of the villages with a population in the range of 1000-1500 should be linked by 1990. This was suggested keeping in view the inter-regional disparities to arrest the unwanted migration; and to achieve the principle of equity and justice to all regions; and to make economic planning more effective and meaningful. Accordingly, it is envisaged that by 2001 AD all the villages, irrespective of their size, should be linked by some type of road network or the other. Thus, the rural roads problem is not only large in size but also be examined over its varied aspects. In this regard, the recommendations of the NTPC are worth-noting:

- Integration of rural roads programme with the integrated rural development

- Supplementary sources of finance are to be mobilized in addition to state resources.

All agree with the imperative need for rural roads development; but no serious thought is given for

mobilizing the huge financial resources required to achieve the objective. The smallness of the village size coupled with their large numbers and also with a wide geographical scatter over large tracts is the major deterrent for any large scale investments on rural roads development with a fair level of accessibility patterns. this summarizes the whole issue of accessibility in our rural areas -- its needs, nature and dimensions.

Section II: Geographical Approach

3.1 It is generally known that the major components in the study of any transport system development are:

  • Human settlements
  • Resources centers
  • Production centers
  • Consuming centers (i.e human settlements)
  • Exporting centers
  • Railways
  • Roadways (and others).

The major thrust of a transport system is to make an inter-woven network of the above components such that the inter-regional flows of gods and services take place uninterruptedly with ease, speed and safety. No region is endowed adequately with the resources to the extent of self-sufficiency an all its needs and thereby resulting in the need for transport from points of availability to the points of consumption. In this sense, the main concern of a transport system is with these two points. In recent years, these points multiplied themselves enormously due to the varied impacts of the developmental planning, As a result, the planning for roads particularly in rural areas, became very complicated due to wide scatter of our villages which in recent years became both sizeable consumers and producers.

However, for various historical reasons all the above components have grown independent of each other. For instance, the scatter and growth of human settlements took place mostly for the movement of resources from one point to the other. This is the legacy of British enterprise in India. Thus, there was no uniformity in their respective patterns of growth and developments. They lack integration and cohesion; nor is there any integrated planning system to monitor their developments. This is due to the fact that each component is guided by and adheres to a distinct set of principles and policies. Consequently, one can notice that there is no consistency among the patterns of growth of there is no consistency among the patterns of growth of the components with which transport system deals with. Further, it is not difficult to find contradictions in their growth patterns. In addition, one can also observe that

the western transport systems are imposed on the Indian geographical setting which is totally different. As a result, there appears to be inherent (or inner) contraction between the transport systems and the geographical setting in our country. On the same way, the developments in the principles of transport systems indicate that all the concerted efforts were made generally to minimize the transport costs or distance between to points. As a result, accessibility/connectivity was never the primary objective of transport planning. Thus, the accessibility was never an integral part of transport planning in our country. Consequently, a large segment of rural areas remained isolated with least accessibility to the main stream of material civilization.

Accessibility: The Need

The issue of rural development and this accessibility assumed special dimensions in recent years for three main reasons. Firstly, the demand/need for transport has increased from rural areas due to the increased volumes of agricultural production and marketable surpluses avowedly caused by green revolution. This was further accentuated by the increased volumes of rural investments necessitated by the national policies on balanced regional development, backward areas development programme and so on. All these changes together with the increasing trends in commercialization of agriculture have produced large demands for infrastructural facilities. Secondly, the rural-urban disparities in its varied ramifications was brought to the forefront by various types of mass media as also by the increased awareness due to the spread of education among the rural population about the disparities and to better their material lot. (This has the similar effect as the first one.) In this context, transport is generally viewed as a 'service' or as one of the basic needs. Thirdly, most of the developmental planners consider 'transport' as the most important factor, (of course along with other infrastructural facilities) which would induce development by attracting more and more productive investments and in migration. It is development-inducer as well as facilitator or promoter. In this case, transport is considered as a factor of production like land, labour and capital. In one case, it enters as an objective of developmental planning while in the other it enters as a constraint for development. In either case, it is obvious that transport is a vital factor in developmental planning. Accordingly, the need for providing transport facility by laying more roads in rural areas has increased enormously and this necessitated a critical consideration of the issue of connectivity/accessibility of both the villages and the roads themselves. Because, both the issue are different. The thrust of the present paper is laid more on the issue of

accessibility rather than on laying of more roads in rural areas.

Accessibility: The Geographical Approach

Needless to say that transport means moving of men and materials from one place to the other. Its thrust is, therefore, on the geographical aspect of a country. From this, it follows that the geographical approach seems to be more meaningful in finding solutions to the issues of the transport and development viewed together as an integrated planning system. Geographical (human) studies in our country reveal that the population densities of the human settlements have increased substantially along the major railway lines (e.g. Bombay-Nagpur-Calcutta line) between the census periods 1951 and 1971. In other words, human settlements along the railways lines have registered faster rates and higher rates of economic development and thereby, attracted in-migration to result in increased population densities. This pattern of developmental process justifies the proposition that the provision of infrastructural facility like transport induces/generates economic development in a particular geographical region1 . This line of argument must also hold good in the case of highways and other major road networks in the country. This being the case, our empirical experiences suggest that the market-forces coupled with the process of development will take care of the problems of accessibility of those villages that lie along the highways at the shorter distances. Therefore, one can infer on general grounds that the problems of accessibility is not very acute along the highways and other major roads. On the contrary, it appears to be very acute in those rural areas whose settlement are located far away (say, more than 5 to 15 kms) from the highways/major roads. Moreover, it is these villages that seem to lag behind in achieving economic development ( could be due to lack of easy approach to market centers) or urbanization trends when compared with their counterparts located at nearby distances from the major roads. The focus of the developmental planners at present is on these hitherto neglected villages. In view of this state of affairs, the rural road planning better concentrate on these far-off villages for laying of road networks with better accessibility/connectivity between/among them as also with the major roads. To this planning system, the concept of growth centers can also be introduced such that the whole rural region becomes a self-sustaining economic entity with better utilization rate of road networks. All this would go a long way in creating the necessary conditions for economic development in rural areas roads and their accessibility. As an approach, this involves broadly the following steps:

  • Identify the highway/major road networks in a particular geographical
  • Locate the villages along the highway routes; assess their population densities, growth rates and its pattern between two points in time (say, two census periods). Investigate the casual reasons;
  • Locate another set of villages which lie far away from those identified highway routes; and repeat the earlier analysis to find out whether these villages really lag behind in terms of growth, urbanization etc. with the first set;
  • Examine the accessibility patterns between the two sets. The difference will then be attributable mainly to their respective levels of development;
  • Resource-base analysis for the two sets to see the casual relation between transport and development;
  • Then, plan for laying of roads with necessary accessibility patterns in both the sets of villages which will be found to be less developed.

The geographical approach as described above can be operationalised either by mapping analysis or by statistical analysis. This approach explicitly distinguishes the villages in the rural areas on the basis of their proximity to the highway/major roads. Assuming that the casual proposition on 'transport and development' is true, this approach lays more stress on the far-off or remote villages and their resource-base. The resource-base analysis of these villages will determine the physical characteristics and the type of the road network that has to be laid. In addition, this would also determine the role of transport in that particular region, either in provising a 'service'/'a basic need or in ushering in new forces for economic development in the rural areas'. The suggested approach will be useful in rural roads planning and it will be more effective if it is combined with the other known approaches like the social benefit-cost analysis, the world bank approach or the liner programming approach.

Transport Requirements and Development in a Rural Setting

Transport, among other things, implies the trips or the frequency of movement of both men and materials. Time element is also added to this. These trips are commonly classified as: purpose-wise; mode-wise and distance-wise trips. The stratum and the magnitude of these trips has a direct relationship with the

level and pattern of development attained by a particular region. The knowledge about this relationship would be useful in planning for the rural roads to meet the increasing transport requirements (of varied types0 of an expanding rural economy. In this context, we have some empirical evidence to indicate a possible relationship between the level of development and the composition of trips in a rural district from a study conducted by the IIMB. On the basis this evidence and on general grounds, the following propositions seen emerge in very broad general terms.

  • As the level of development increases in the region, the total number of trips also increase, perhaps more than proportionately. Similar is the case with the per capita trips and the per household trips.
  • As the level of development increases, the proportion of "productive trips" in the total trips increases. This is mainly due to the increased volume of economic transaction generated by the increased levels of developmental activity.
  • As the level of development increases, the proportion of trips by mechanical modes particularly by bus in the total trips increases. Time element assumes increasing importance.
  • Similar is the case with the distance-wise trips. The proportion of long-distance trips in the total trips will increase with the level of development. This is largely due to the expansion of markets - both for inputs and outputs.

The empirical evidence from the earlier mentioned study on rural roads suggests that the composition of trips by various categories undergoes changes over different levels and patterns of economic development. In other words, the relative shares of different types of trips in the total trips undergo significant changes as the rural economy develops, or as the agricultural economy transforms gradually into (industrial) non-agricultural economy. Besides, the composition of trips is generally subjected to the seasonal factors. As a matter of fact, the accessibility patterns also get changed with the relative changes in the trip composition by different types. These relations need empirical verification on a larger scale in diversified settings. However, they should enter explicitly into the planning framework for rural roads and their accessibility patterns. Besides, they should also be considered while designing the public. On the basis of the analysis of changes in trip composition, various alternative arrangements can be worked out or designed to suit the changing nature of transport requirements at different levels of economic activity.

The Issue of Accessibility Vs. Laying of Additional Road Lengths

Nearness to a road and accessibility are two different things. When a village is physically connected to a major road network, then it is said to have accessibility. Otherwise, mere nearness does not make much dent on the village economy. In the same vein, the issue of accessibility/connectivity should be distinguished from that of providing additional road lengths in a rural settings. The former implies smaller distances with lower investments while the later implies the opposite. The former has significant investments implications in the sense that a small investments on accessibility will result in larger benefits. Generally, investments on accessibility are smaller when compared with the other. But, the benefits arising out of them follow the opposite trend. In the ultimate analysis, accessibility will result in improved utilization of existing roads and a saving of time and distance. More importantly, it increases the ease with which transport activity takes place in the rural area. No doubt, in a few cases, it may result in road congestion and traffic management problems. On the whole, the investments on accessibility bear larger return than on laying of additional road length, particularly in the context of the rural roads planning. Its provision on a selective basis would be more meaningful and more beneficial if has a region has a large resource-base that would sustain higher levels of economic activity. Under these conditions, accessibility really ushers in new forces for economic development of a region. Since it has definite advantage over the laying of new roads, it should be given a priority in rural roads planning. This involves a lot of primary data to be collected on the rural roads networks and the intersection points for accessibility along with the information on the resource-base potential and the socio-economic factors. All this would enable the policy makers to take rational decisions to get maximum benefits out of the proposed investments on the rural roads, particularly in the context of ever increasing agricultural production and marketable surpluses.

Since accessibility points/requirements deal with the micro level situations in the rural areas, alternatively, one can leave this issue to the local leadership are now more educated and better informed than what they were in the past. Therefore, they are now better judges for themselves. This is all due to the dent made by the increased spread of education facilities in the rural areas. In addition, the access to information has also increased due to the mass media. Due to these factors, the local leadership is in a better position to identify and access fairly accurately the need for and the pattern of road accessibility. When once this is done, the planner will only gather all such projects for further scrutiny. Then, they can rank/prioritise them by their merits and approve in the order of importance and of immediate need such that maximum benefit will accrue to the largest number of people under a given set of resources constraints. Under this system of arrangement, the rural roads planning is made with people's participation in such a way that the people's preferances are ensured to get reflected in the planning framework. This line of approach is in consonance with the philosophy of "planning from bottom" 1.

Section III: Rural Roads Planning -- A Policy Framework

Transport is one of the major components in the package of infrastructure facilities. Infrastructure is a necessary condition, though not a precondition, for economic development. It facilitates and conduces the process of economic development to set in motion and makes it continue in a self sustaining manner. The demand for transport is partly a derived one, and partly a direct one. The demand for transport increases with the structure and rate of economic development, and the physical volume of economic transactions will have a direct bearing on transport requirements.

Transport is a basic input like energy both in agriculture and industry. It may be noted that the transport creates utilities directly by moving the produce from the points of availability ( which otherwise would have zero or minimal utility) to the points of consumption. The sand/stone is a case in point. Besides, the economic role, the transport plays the sociological role in the bringing people from various geographical areas nearer and perhaps together, to attain social stability and cohesion so essential for human survival in peace and order. Thus, the transport has a dual role to play in any socio-economic system. Consequently, it follows that the transport has two distinct components, viz.,

- the 'productive' component comparable to that of any factor of production like land, labour, capital etc., and

- the 'service' component comparable to that of education, health, law and order etc.

The role of transport in rural areas as seen through these two components seems to be relative to the extent of resource-base and the level of development. The role may get transformed gradually from 'service' to 'productive' dimension, depending upon the response of the region to developmental planning. In this sense, they are complementary to each other. There fore, the provision of rural roads to a large extent, fulfills the second component, i.e., 'service' to rural population in the short run and 'productive' component in the long run. The relative share of these two components in the total contribution of the transport, again is the matter of the level of the development attained by a region. Both are causally related. In view of these issues, it is necessary that those two aspects should enter explicitly into the planning strategies for rural roads development.

The above two components, which are same as the two dimensions are not generally comparable to each other. The investment criteria for the one need not necessary apply to the other. The conventional optimization in transport as a service. In one, the principle of justice and equity is involved while in the other, the principle of economic rate of return is involved. One yields short term benefits while the other long run benefits. Besides, the nature of benefits also differs between the two. One enters as the objective of the economic development while the other as the tool )or means) of development process. The above consideration should enter explicitly into the policy making framework for the transport sector. The conventional optimization techniques may not fairly justify the investments in transport as a 'service'.

Transport and Development

There is the view that the provision of infrastructure facilities such as the transport, energy and credit will attract large investments of varied kinds and thereby lead to the economic development to the particular region. In other words, infrastructure creates economic development. The population concentrates along the major railway routes, will explain the phenomenon. However this may not be true in all the cases or across all types of geographical regions. For the present purpose, the geographical regions can be classified under three broad categories, representing three different situations. They are:

  • Economically development regions with plentiful resource-base;
  • Economically less developed regions but with adequate and easily exploitable resource-base;
  • Underdeveloped regions with no resource-base for easy exploitation.

Resources refer to physical, financial and manpower resources. They also refer to subsoil and other natural resources. Transport as a part of infrastructure, enters very differently under each of the above situations In the first category in which development already took place for various historical and other reasons as in the case of Bombay, Calcutta or the other industrial belts, the transport enters as a constraints or a bottleneck for further development and to keep pace with the sustained levels of developments and its diversifications.

In the second case, the provision of transport infrastructure is likely to hasten the process of development by attracting more and more investments mainly because of the presence of adequate and easily exploitable resource-base potential. In this case, transport enters as an inducer or initiator of development process. If a region is endowed with adequate resource potential the laying of infrastructure like transport will induce and facilitate the chain of growth process to take place. Thus, it enters very effectively and more productively in this case. Its role in this case is fairly comparable to that of any factor of production. Therefore, the laying of transport network becomes a means to achieve economic development in this particular geographical setting.

There is the third situation which is characterized by lack of adequate resources (physical) potential. Transport alone is not sufficient to achieve progress. More importantly, a region should have been endowed with resources potential. Unless resources potential is there, mere laying of transport infrastructure will not generate any progress. Therefore, transport can only be considered as a sufficient condition for economic progress while the resource-base being necessary condition. In this particular case, transport has to enter in a very different way. Here the 'service' component of the transport will be more pronounced than its counterpart. Transport will have to enter in this case as the part of the 'basic needs' programme rather than a part of infrastructure. The same economic logic that justifies the 'basic needs' programme (like health, nutrition, education etc.) will justify the laying of transport network in this third situation in which transport may not generate development due to lack of resources potential. Therefore, the laying of transport in the third situation will have to be considered as a part of the planned programme to improve the quality of life or the life styles of the rural people in a backward area which is not amenable for the induced growth process. From this viewpoint, the transport enters as an objective of economic development rather than to achieve progress. It is in this context, that the problem of rural road planning in an economically backward region with little or on resource-potential, has to be understood and analyzed.

The three developmental situations as discussed above, will give rise to three types of approaches to transport planning. They are briefly discussed below along with schematic diagram.

Suggestions and Recommendations

Approach I: This refers to the first situation in which a region is already developed. In this case, the policy should be one of achieving better/fuller utilization of existing transport capacities, rather than creating new capacities. Here, the assumption is that the region will not grow further due to the limitations imposed by the environmental factors, balanced regional growth policies etc.

Approach II: This refers to the second situation in which a region is underdeveloped but endowed with potential resources. In this case, the policy will be one of laying additional transport capacities from the points of resources availability to the points of processing centers like industries. Here all the transport modes like railways, roads etc. become equally important. Their choice may be worked out by considering transport demand potential and investment constraints.

Approach III: This refers to the third situation in which the region is economically backward with no resources potential. Here the policy will be one of developing road network (rather than railway network ) with larger connectivity. In this case, transport is viewed as an element in the package of 'basic needs' and as such, the conventional investment criteria may not be applicable. In this situation, there could be few pockets with resource potential. Further, a different approach can be followed.

Accessibility of a particular place in a transportation network is generally considered as a measure of physical location indicating the ease with which a place can be reached. It indicates either explicitly or implicitly the connectivity injected into an area through the road network. It implies more of a physical connection rather than mere nearness to a road. Higher the degree of accessibility, higher will be the scope for socio-economic interaction with the vicinity and hence, will be the higher rates of development. Therefore, accessibility adds more utility to the transport system and enhances the total benefits. It contributes differently under different approaches/situations as outlined earlier. Similarly, its need also varies. However, it should enter explicitly into the framework of rural roads planning.

The Financial Implications

Since the problem is large, it requires huge financial resources to achieve the objective of giving the accessibility by the rural roads and thereby to the villages. At present, the responsibilities lies with different organizations including the local bodies. There appear to be no coordination among various official bodies involved in rural roads planning. the issue of mobilizing additional financial resources is a very difficult one. The

local bodies are known for their inadequate financial position. The financial issue can be tackled in two ways:

a.A rural road development cess can be imposed on all the product that enter into and leave the rural markets. One of the options in this regard is the agricultural marketing yards which have registered substantial progress in the recent past. The revenues thus collected can be spent on road accessibility. The local bodies can be charged with the responsibility of collecting the cess and spending on roads after identifying the appropriate and optimal accessibility points. Thus, people's participation is also ensured. The revenues thus raised may not, however, be adequate; they should be supplemented.

b.Since the demand for the manufactured products is coming from the rural sector, a part of the general revenues from the centre should be diverted to the rural roads developments projects. These two sources together may solve the problem of finances to a large extent.

An organization like that or the Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) may be created to look after the whole issue of rural roads development and their accessibility patterns. This is suggested keeping in view the commonalities and complementaries between rural energy and rural transport in terms of their roles, nature and significance in achieving the goal of developmental planning. That organization will be an apex body which will also coordinate the functions of various agencies involved in the overall development of the rural sector. Modalities and the necessary organizational structure for such an apex body can be worked out when once it is accepted in principle.

Conclusions

The smallness of the village size coupled with their large numbers and also with a wide geographical scatter over large tracts of the country is found to the major deterrent for any large scale investments on rural roads development with a fair level of accessibility patterns. It is both a detrimental factor and a justification for accessibility investments, as well. The paper suggests a geographical approach to assess the need, to identify the accessibility points as also to priorities them such that the total benefits accruing out of investments on accessibility will be maximum. As a complementary, the paper attempts to formulate a general policy framework for rural roads planning in which the accessibility issue enters explicitly. It is suggested also to set up an apex body to take care of various problems concerning with the rural roads planning and development.

References

  • Guha Sabita, "Economic Impact of Rural Roads (A Study at Block Level)" Indian Roads Congress Journal Vol.8, No.7, Indian Roads Congress, New Delhi July 1980.
  • Centre of Transportation Studies, Indian Institute of Management "District Level Study of Socio-Economic Aspects of Rural Roads in Ratnagiri District of Maharashtra" - A Report, Bangalore 1983.
  • Valette, Jean Paul, et al "Role of Transport in Regional Economic Development" - Lexington Books, Lexington Mass 1971.
  • Planning Commission, Govt. of India The National Transport Policy Committee Report, 1980.
  • Hoyle, B.S., Transport and Development, Macmillan London 1973.
  • Indian Roads Congress, New Delhi "Reports Containing Recommendations of IRC Regional Workshop On Rural Road Development", 1984
  • Srinivasan N.S., "Aspects of Rural Development" Indian Highways Vol.12, December 1983
  • Deshpande, R.A., "Development of Rural Roads in India" Indian Highways Vol. No.1, January 1980.
  • Hershey Daniel, Transport Analysis, Plenium Publishers, New York,1973
  • Asif Faiza "The Economic Analysis of Rural Road Projects". World Bank Staff Working Paper, 201, 1976.
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