27-06-2017, 03:37 PM
The rural road sector in India received a major boost with the introduction of the Ministry of Agriculture's Rural Roads Program 2000. The program will exist until the goal of connecting all households with populations of more than 250 in Roads all the time. The main challenge now is to expand the existing road network to include access to remote areas and upgrade and maintain existing roads. It has been suggested in this article to consider maintenance as part of the overall road asset management system. Given that the process would be quite complex, it has been proposed to adopt a step-by-step approach. To this end, an outline has been presented for the development of rural road management in India. An institutional arrangement has also been proposed on the basis of three types of maintenance: routine, periodic and emergency. Given that community involvement is the key to the success of any future maintenance strategy, good community involvement practices have been discussed in selected countries that can help develop an appropriate participatory approach in India. There are many aspects to be addressed for the successful implementation of a rural road maintenance system. Some of the main ones have stood out here, like the classification of rural roads and the handling of all them under an umbrella administration; Decentralization of responsibilities; Availability of relevant data; The development of manuals for the maintenance of roads; The shortage of labor; Critical community involvement and schemes to include social development issues.
