How Modi government is developing roads in the Northeast to shoulder progress and parity

Roads are the arteries of development, and the Narendra Modi government is building them at one of the fastest speeds ever seen in the Northeast. With many of them near completion, the roads will bring trade and access parity in the Northeast. And it signals something greater––actual work towards inclusion of the Northeast and not just the Nehru government’s single agenda of drawing borders to keep China out.

The pace earlier was a kilometre a day and it has now been spiked to building 37 kilometres a day by the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL). Projects that used to be extended for years are now fully or 90 percent done much before the deadline. The figures are available for everyone to see on regular tracking websites hosted by other departments and not just the Union Ministry for Road, Transport and Highways.

The UPA government was great at signing agreements and MoUs but slow and incompetent at execution. The greatest sloth of the UPA, the Congress party, was its lead but had no political will, instead perpetuating a corrupt and inefficient system of executing projects. People in the Northeast paid dearly for this action-less governance. And it is not just departmental execution but a bias in development that has choked the arteries of progress from pumping blood into the Northeast.