Rural Infrastructure and Citizen Monitoring

Posted on: September 30 2009 | Author: megha | Comments:0

Rural Infrastructure and Citizen Monitoring

Citizen Action Support Group*

Despite decades of planning, infrastructure problems continue to pose severe barriers to India’s development. Agriculture which employs nearly two thirds of our population is greatly handicapped by the deplorable state of rural infrastructure, especially road connectivity and power. While, certain infrastructure projects have been initiated in rural areas, there is still a long way to go.

One of the major initiatives in building up rural infrastructure came from Government of India in December 2000. Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) was designed and envisaged to increase and improve connectivity between rural areas and also link up with urban areas. The PMGSY scheme under National Rural Roads Development Agency (NRRDA), Ministry of Rural Development aimed at unconnected habitations with 1000 or more population in the first phase (2000-2003) and habitations with 500 or more population in the second phase. In hilly regions and tribal regions habitations with 250 or more population were also targeted. Unlike the earlier construction methods and design, the PMGSY adopted a new method and design to connect the hitherto unconnected rural villages.

One of the methods was to use construction material that is widely available within the near by vicinity of the planned road. For instance, if an area has abundant fly-ash, the same would be used in the road construction. This helped in cutting down the construction costs. With regard to the design of the road, instead of the earlier type, the scheme has come up with all-weather roads. Given the diversity of weather conditions in most of India, this helps the road to remain in good condition for longer periods. This in turn helps in saving on repair works and reconstruction costs.

The road construction sites were mandated to carry full details of the road on an information board that is to be installed in the beginning and end of road. The information board carried details like name of the contractor, starting and finishing dates, total distance of the road, total cost of the construction and such other details were to be mentioned in the local language. Further, a separate information board is to be installed carrying the rough design of the road and various stages in road construction. Such information boards were mandated to empower the local communities and thereby give them a sense of ownership.

However, like many other sarkari schemes and programmes, the local communities and people remained absent from the entire planning and implementation of PMGSY. The information boards giving details were only of little help. A proper community monitoring of such rural schemes would go a long way in helping to build up infrastructure in rural areas with greater quality and pace. Such trained monitoring would certainly go long way in giving a sense of ownership to the local communities. This has been already proved in the case of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in many parts of the country.

It was against this backdrop that Public Affairs Centre (PAC), Bangalore undertook an experiment for monitoring rural roads through trained citizen volunteers. PAC in association with Raasta, Bangalore has developed simple tools to measure and assess the quality of the roads constructed under PMGSY. The tests covered key aspects of roads such as quality of road surface, road specifications (width, thickness, camber, etc.), drainage, and road furniture. Citizen volunteers were trained in the use of the tests by PAC and RASTA in partnership with NGOs such as Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement in Karnataka and People’s Rural Education Movement and HUMANITY in Orissa. The study was carried out in Mysore and Bijapur districts in Karnataka; Bolangir and Gajapati in Orissa.

PAC with the help of Raasta developed simple tools to measure and monitor the rural roads constructed under PMGSY. These tools with simple training could be used by anyone easily. One 15 metre tape for measuring the width of the road and shoulders. One 30 cms scale to measure the height and breadth of the KM stones. One camber board to measure the cross slope of the roads and shoulders. One dip stick with 75 mm and 20 mm on each side. The dip stick is used to measure the thickness of the various layers of the road. Finally square rings containing different measurements, to measure the size of the aggregates (stones) used for the road construction.

The major findings of PAC’s road monitoring experiment are summarized below:

*        Of the 18 roads (completed and ongoing) on which tests were conducted in Karnataka and Orissa, only eight fell into the “high” score category. A majority (10 out of 18) of roads received only “medium” scores as they did not pass the tests in full. The specific aspects of quality where they lag behind can be found from the scoring details.

*        Karnataka’s rural roads tested as a part of the PAC study have done better than the rural roads in Orissa. Only a third of the Karnataka rural roads failed to meet the standards laid down by the tests. In Orissa, on the other hand, only two out of nine roads passed the tests in full. It may mean that technical planning and supervision was somewhat better in Karnataka than in Orissa.

*        High scoring roads have performed well on all the key components of the tests, namely, road specifications, road surface quality, shoulder, road furniture, etc. Medium scoring roads performed poorly in one or more of these components of quality.

*        Overall awareness of rural citizens about the roads being built in their area was reasonably high (60%). In fact, public awareness was higher in Orissa (66%) than in Karnataka (53%). Nearly two thirds of the people were also aware that contractors were responsible for post-construction road maintenance.

*        Over 80% of the rural people in the survey noted that roads benefited them most in the transport of agriculture produce to markets, visits to health facilities and sending children to schools.

The above exercise not only proved that the local communities with minimum educational levels are capable of using simple technical tools in monitoring the quality systems. Also, a blind construction of rural infrastructure will be a futile exercise without the involvement of local communities and a sense of ownership.

* Citizen Action Support Group, Public Affairs Centre (www.pacindia.org), No. 15, KIADB Industrial Area, Bommasandra-Jigani Link Road, Bangalore-562 106.