American president John F. Kennedy once said that, "American roads are not good because America is rich. America is rich because American roads are good."
Roads are the basic infrastructure of any country and it is used to reduce the logistics cost of a country and industrialists invest in the country where logistics cost is low.
India has the world's second longest road network spanning over 66 lakh km. About 67 percent of India's freight which costs more than $200 million is transported through roads and more than 90 percent of India's passenger traffic movement uses road networks. However, the potential of the Indian road system has not been fully utilised. Therefore, to harness the full potential of the Indian road network, the Government of India launched a project called Bharatmala for road network upgradation.
The first implementation of high quality roads in India was started by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with his schemes Pradhan Matri Gramin Sadak Yojana and Golden Quadrilateral and establishment of NHDA.
In 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation of an umbrella project called Bharat Mala for road development in India, which aims to increase industrial production, increase job opportunities, increase industrial investment and reduce pollution or reduce logistics costs and fuel consumption by increasing the length of the road network, it aims to reduce traffic congestion and road accidents by improving road quality and modernizing safety standards and integrating technology in toll collection which we see as the use of Fastag.
This project will be completed in 2 phases. But at present the government. Work is underway to complete Phase-1, out of the total 83,677 km of road construction, 34800 km of roads were to be completed under this phase.
Phase 1 of the project targets 10,000 km under National Highways, 9000 km under Economic Corridors, 6000 km under inter-corridor and feeder routes, 5000 km under road expansion under National Corridor Efficiency Programme, 2000 under border and international Km has to be constructed. Connectivity Roads, Coastal Road and Port Connectivity 2000 km under roads and 800 km under expressways.
The cost of Phase 1 of the project has more than doubled the project cost to ₹10.64 trillion, compared to the earlier estimate of ₹5.35 trillion. ₹4.10 trillion to be spent on the project till October 2023. According to ICRA, (Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency) per km of roads constructed increased from ₹15 crore to ₹30 crore.
Responding to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Nitin Gadkari said the project amount has increased due to high inflation in construction materials, increase in labor costs and increase in land rates under the land acquisition process. And it is also getting delayed, as per the previous plan it was to be completed by 2022, but due to Covid and some financial stress the government slowed down the project and extended the deadline to complete the project to 2027-28 .