Govt plans road map for better connectivity

Several roads connecting sensitive border areas along India-China-Nepal border with the rest of the country were washed away in Uttarakhand floods recently. Result? Rescue teams couldn’t reach the cut off areas, and in case of a security threat, no troop movement was possible either.

Updated on: Jul 6, 2013, 22:44:41 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Several roads connecting sensitive border areas along India-China-Nepal border with the rest of the country were washed away in Uttarakhand floods recently. Result? Rescue teams couldn’t reach the cut off areas, and in case of a security threat, no troop movement was possible either.

Waking up to this reality, country’s premier road construction agency in sensitive areas, Border Roads Organisation, has asked the Central government to build roads - along new alignments - that can withstand monsoons, rather than restoring the damaged ones.

“The Cabinet secretariat has asked the BRO to submit a proposal in this regard,” said an official, wishing anonymity, as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

New roads will mean quicker rescue operations in times of disasters and faster troop movement in case of a security threat.

Most of the roads washed away in the recent flash floods had been hurriedly put together parallel to pedestrian tracks during Indo-China war in 1962, said a report submitted to the government after the flood disaster . The roads were not developed later for fear of Chinese army using them in case of an attack.

However, a top official, wishing anonymity, said the government estimates that new roads in Uttarakhand upper reaches will cost more than Rs 1,000 crore and it will take a few years to set the plan in motion. For now, it would go ahead with repairs of the damaged road network, expected to cost Rs 100 crore.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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