Corruption in road projects has spread like cancer: PM

Remarking that corruption in road construction projects in the past "has spread like cancer", Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said there was need for "quality benchmarks and quality assurance" for rural roads as in the case of national highways.

He was speaking at the inauguration of a national conference on rural roads. The prime minister also released the "Rural Roads Plan Vision:2025".

Singh said though crores of rupees were invested every year on road construction and maintenance, the condition of the roads worsened with every monsoon.

Lauding the rural development ministry's initiative to solve the issue, the prime minister hoped that the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and Bharat Nirman could be implemented "without this affliction and in a transparent manner".

Identifying three priority areas in road development, he said the first need was highways with many lanes, which was being carried out at a cost of Rs 2,20,000 crore.

He said the second need was rural roads linking villages to towns, market centres and highways while the third requirement was good quality border roads and better road connectivity in the vital north-eastern region, he said.

Singh said under Bharat Nirman a time-bound business plan had been prepared to provide all-weather rural road connectivity to 66,000 villages at an investment of Rs 48,000 crore.

He said there was a need to evolve cost-effective technologies, which use local materials, for construction of rural roads and also to make road construction as labour intensive as possible.

He described regular maintenance and upkeep of rural roads as necessary pre-conditions for sustaining the benefits that roads bring to rural communities. "While we make every effort to mobilise resources for launching construction projects, we display a remarkably niggardly attitude when it comes to routine maintenance," he said.

Anguished over the country losing road assets worth thousands of crores of rupees annually due to poor maintenance, Singh said, "We can not afford to allow this state of affairs to continue any longer".

He said the prevailing "culture of indifference" towards maintenance of public assets has to change immediately and added that dedicated funding, proper institutional arrangements and accountability systems were required urgently.