The reason for a very large number of problems at the national level and in the daily lives of citizens in villages as well as cities is the migration of rural population to our metros and tier two and tier three urban centres. Thus, this phenomenon has an impact on the quality of our governance and the pace of our economic growth.
The uneven socio-economic development of our rural areas is also manifesting itself in places like social regression or, worse, Maoist violence. The desire to enjoy a better quality of life, accelerated socio-economic upward mobility and the benefits of technology is a universal phenomenon driving the migration of increasing numbers of people from rural to urban areas and from less developed to more developed. Some parts of the country.
A somewhat balanced approach towards developing our road networks, which are the real arteries of life and vitality of the national economy, will meet this urge while helping in better governance of our urban, sub-urban and rural areas. This approach will help reverse migration flows into cities. This is a simple, fast and significantly cheaper way of achieving our national objectives of balanced, ecologically sustainable and accelerated economic growth with significant positive impact for India’s international stature. It will also help address the extremely complex challenges of national efforts towards fighting climate change, atmospheric pollution and the recent pandemic. The Prime Minister has given high importance to infrastructure in the government strategy for accelerated socio-economic development of the country.
Cities have become the driving force of India’s development today; long-distance migration of population from remote villages defines the social and economic life of the country. Successful reversal of these migration flows can take India on an accelerated growth path, as well as help in better governance of cities that currently suffer from population pressure, inadequate infrastructure, pressure on adjacent fertile agricultural lands for rapid urban expansion. And are becoming uncontrolled due to environmental degradation. , Although infrastructure in cities, not only in metros like Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, but also in medium-sized towns, is getting better, it is always in a state of trying to catch up due to the pressure of other competing demand. National resources. Although urban governance and delivery of municipal services are not improving for their residents, the gap between the quality of infrastructure in cities and villages is continuously widening, leading to increasing pressure for rural migration to cities.
In the context of the national effort to realize the full potential of India’s international role, the country’s demographically unbalanced and uneven economic growth poses a major obstacle. This phenomenon of uncontrolled urban migration also reflects poor agricultural development and limited rural employment and skill development opportunities. Hosting approximately 63% of the population, an uneconomic and unsustainable agricultural sector – 16% of the national gross domestic product (GDP) – requires massive financial support. For example, in the United Kingdom, 17% of the population (mostly elderly) is rural and the agricultural sector contributes 0.61% to GDP.
This unbalanced economic development is manifested in the concentration of large numbers of migrant workers in urban centres, vast urban slums and a large number of unregulated urban colonies. The problem of their management is acquiring unprecedented seriousness. No less serious is the problem of urban pollution, which, coupled with the looming threat of climate change, is affecting a very large section of the Indian population, especially in North and Central India; According to a study of trends in South Asia over a 20-year time frame, both increased greenhouse gas concentrations and local aerosol pollution have the potential to alter rainfall patterns, even causing minor deviations from normal in monsoon rainfall. Will be prominent. Its impact on regional agriculture is affecting millions of people. Delay in monsoon will significantly reduce agricultural production, water availability, hydropower generation and grid stability and conversely, increase in rainfall will lead to extreme floods and mass migration.
The current policy of building high-profile expressways over long and short distances has created its own problems. Firstly, these projects require huge capital costs with considerable time-frames and their returns for such capital expenditure are often not realistically calculated. Then, there is also a fear among the rural population that their meager land holdings will be taken away due to the construction of expressways connecting major cities and bringing little economic growth to the surrounding rural areas. This is coupled with pressure from builders who create townships along these expressways and thus, put pressure on the limited – adjacent – ​​fertile agricultural land.
Furthermore, these expressways are connected to major city transport arteries to discharge traffic in both directions, thereby contributing to traffic congestion in cities; Multiple elevated roads connecting these expressways to different choke points within the cities will reduce the problem to a great extent. In metropolitan cities with metro services, inner city bus services should be discontinued as they are rarely used even during peak hours, further exacerbating traffic problems; Instead, comfortable 15-20 seater buses can be introduced within the radius of half the distance between two metro stations to pick and drop passengers to the nearby metro station.
As far as the challenge of migration flow into cities is concerned, the bigger puzzle is that the government should make efforts to maintain an average vehicle speed of 60-80 kmph by setting aside slow speeds on our inter-city roads . -Driving traffic at high speed.
A general approach to our road building program might suggest that this could be done by converting existing highways emanating from major cities into expressways. Today, most of these highways are, at least, double lanes in both directions. By adding a shoulder to these carriageways for emergency vehicle movement for police or ambulance or breakdown, enclosing it with strong guardrails, and constructing exit routes at suitable distances to allow this fast-moving vehicle traffic to exit the expressway. These highways can be converted into expressways or country roads, or vice versa. These expressways will basically have one lane for slow traffic and the other for fast moving vehicles.
Also, since expressways have legally enforced minimum speed limits below which vehicles cannot drive, slower-moving traffic requires a complementary, connecting network of country roads. Expressways will be closed to slow down traffic but the surrounding feeder road network will remain available. Bridging the gaps in the existing country’s road network is not too time-consuming or expensive. This approach is not unique, as is evident in the long-standing European Commission funding program for its new member states to build dual-carriage expressways.
Extensions of this approach include the creation of such infrastructure where, for various reasons, urban clusters are developing through increased migration flows from surrounding rural areas and sub-urban areas. Replacing the highways policy for such clusters by the development of a network of expressways with complementary country roads would lead to better economic integration of regional cities with the surrounding agricultural countryside. Through this process these integrated regional groups can be scaled up to the national level.
The results will be similar to those seen in other countries, especially developed countries, which have built a network of expressways and country roads. Nevertheless, quick and relatively cheap construction of such infrastructure would immediately improve the quality of governance in cities and provide easy and widespread access to surrounding towns and villages to the outlying areas.
This article has been written by Yogendra Kumar, former Ambassador of New Delhi.
