Dream project

It is welcome news that the government has maintained its seriousness toward developing mid-hill highway, one of the few mega projects pushed with national priority over the past few decades. The detailed project report (DPR) of the highway has confirmed that the highway (1,776 kilometers) proposed to pass through 215 villages of 26 districts will directly benefit 7 million people.



Considering this scale, the highway will probably be the second major project after east-west highway, which will redefine and help recreate new sociological outlook and economic face of communities living along its entire stretch. The direct employment that it will provide during the construction phase is just one small benefit that it will bring. It will help to do away with poor connectivity, exclusion and other lack of opportunities that have been brewing resentment and poverty in the mid-hill districts.



While lauding the effort, we would like to make one critical observation though. The DPR says the highway will be a four-lane structure. Considering the present poor economic activities and low return of the regions through which the highway traverses, it appears fine. But we feel the government should look beyond it. The DPR itself says the highway will open up the prospect of developing hydropower projects in 16 places, tourism destinations in 15 places and housing and agricultural projects in 15 places each. If we anticipate the mid-hill highway to be a major driver of socio-economic transformation for hilly people, we can easily say that the four-lane road will prove myopic. Hence, we suggest the government to go for six-lane road, and if constructing six-lane road now is not possible, it should at least acquire additional space along the alignment so that the highway could be expanded into six lanes and more whenever needed in the future.



The DPR has also made clear that the government will need to invest at least Rs 43.38 billion to complete its construction. This is huge in terms of figure, but not when compared with economic benefits and return it promises. As Ministry of Finance believes, garnering that much of assistance from the development partners will not be difficult. What will be difficult is making sure that the project will move at the pace everyone wishes it to move. In this connection, we are mainly concerned over the lack of capacity of Ministry of Physical Planning and Works to handle multiple large scale projects at one go. The government must build capacity of the ministry and its line agencies, do away with moral hazards and corruption seen in such projects and bolster its spirit to deliver quality output.



At the same time, we would also like to urge the government to make sure that the mid-hill project does not reel under crisis of confidence between the government and locals, as other infrastructure and many other development projects have done. For this, the government must approach the people and interact with them, informing them of the benefits of the project, demonstrating them how it will improve their life and livelihood. It must also adopt appropriate law to prevent unwanted encroachment of public land. Mainly, political parties must come together in such development works, instead of trying to politicize local issues to fulfill petty party interests.

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