Even as the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana has been in place for a decade, rural connectivity still remains a distant dream for many states.
All these years, Bihar, for instance, was involved in a tussle with the Centre over the list of villages needed to be included in the scheme. While the former gave a list of revenue villages, the Centre wanted a list of habitations. A revenue village is a sum of several habitations.
This week, the state, under chief minister Nitish Kumar, and the ministry, led by a proactive minister like Jairam Ramesh, managed to get the list right and about 22,000 km of roads — of the total stretch of 60,000 km — would now be finally covered under the scheme in Bihar.
Many villages which were kept away from the benefits of the scheme for 10 years would finally have road connectivity. The core network (the road network needed to link all habitations with population of less than 500) has been an issue with many states. Rajasthan also had a problem, which has now been resolved.
According to the rural development ministry, when the scheme was started in 2000, every state was asked to make its core network or map the road requirement, linking habitations. All states gave their core network by 2003-04, which were finalised. But, Bihar could not give a proper list. While the Centre insisted on a list of habitations, what it gave was a list of revenue villages.
A revenue village comprises several habitations. So, the lists were sent back and forth many times and projects were funded on an ad-hoc basis, rather than on the basis of a proper mapping of requirement, says the ministry.
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“It is a big step forward’’, said a top ministry official about the finalisation of the core network of Bihar.
The finalisation of the present list has come after painstaking bureaucratic work. The Centre wanted to ensure the new list did not cover villages which were already covered.
A central team physically verified 20 per cent of the villages . The Centre wanted to ensure the list did not have habitations not included in 2000. So, they asked for a list of habitations published in 2003 and tallied the final list with it. Again, it sought to tally the population of the earlier list of revenue villages with the population of the habitations now submitted.
After this, chief minister Nitish Kumar and rural development minister Jairam Ramesh declared this week that the scheme would now proceed without any hassle in Bihar. However, the delay has caused Ramesh to openly admit it was impossible to complete the work of connecting all habitations even in the next seven years.