Peter De Melo
Well done Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, your vision to create five million jobs by investing in building thousands of kilometers of new roads and shipping sector is a tremendous breakthrough in opening opportunities to unemployed youth and new business.
Now, we will be able to drive trouble free with miles of straight roads and on bridges. Is employment going to be on mass recruitment or phase-wise basis? Then, development in the shipping sector is a brilliant idea, people will have permanent jobs.
Since the Union Minister is behind these expensive roadways, wouldn’t it have been better to have given a little more thought to an alternative that would have been more cost effective and less destructive? Concretization or asphalting will destroy land and other resources.
Is it not beneficial for us to maintain the existing roads? The new roads will be race tracks and killer highways. The best option would be to invest and expand the existing railway network and add new lines. One railway car is equivalent to almost 10 to 15 trucks in capacity. Transportation by railway is more economical, faster and creates less pollution. Increase in vehicular traffic on highways will add and increase pollution levels, unending lines of trucks besides other vehicles, more heat, reckless driving, over speeding, accidents and deaths as well as garbage alongside the roads.
If development was driven by the railways, we can have construction of modern logistics and distribution centers, with machinery and permanent jobs at every other railway station.
