The turn of the millennium has seen a surge in infrastructure investments as fund flows to important sectors like roads, ports, airports and railways picked up with new projects and innovative funding strategies. But nowhere is the insatiable demand for infrastructure more visible than in the case of rural roads built under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) .

Not only has the length of rural roads built each year steadily gone up from 22,891 km in 2005-06 to 54,821 km in 2009-10 but it has also seen that unlike in the case of the other central schemes, the enthusiasm for rural roads continue unabated. The numbers for the first nine months of the current financial year even shows that many states have even exceeded the annual PMGSY targets, something rare in the annals of infrastructure schemes, which are usually bogged down in bureaucratic red tape and environmental issues.

One indicator of the continuing success of the PMGSY scheme is the the steady increase in allocations for rural road building following the demands made by most states. The rural road scheme, which has been in existence from 2000-01, has seen its budget allocations zoom over the years. While the amount spent hovered around R2,500 crore annually in each of the first five years till 2004-05 the allocations have further soared in the second half of the decade.

The initial impetus for that came from the assistance provided for the rural road scheme by multilateral agencies like the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank who steered more funds into the rural roads sector and pushed up the total allocations to R4,220 crore in 2005-06 and R5,226 crore in 2006-07. And the fund flows further accelerated when new loans were provided for the rural road scheme from the rural infrastructure development fund (RIDF) provided by Nabard. Allocation for rural roads touched a massive R11,000 crore in 2007-08 and it went up to R15,280 crore in 2008-09 and further to R18,500 crore in 2009-10.

According to the latest annual report of the rural development ministry, a cumulative amount of R60,939 crore has so far been released to the states and the Union territories for rural road building, of which R59,852 crore has been spent on road works measuring 2,50,605 km by end-December 2009. And the habitation connected each year has steadily gone up from 8,202 in 2005-06 to 10,801 in 2006-07, 11,336 in 2007-08 and further to 14,454 in 2008-09 with the length of rural roads built going up from 22,891 km, to 30,710 km, 41,231 km and 52,405 km, respectively. And most recent figures show that the length of rural road built has further gone up to 54,821 km in 2009-10.

The surge in rural road building has seen a major change in the rural settings of many states with political commentators often attributing even the electoral success of incumbent governments in many states like Bihar to the gusto of rural road building. But the real achievers who have made the most substantial gains in road built has not been widely recognised.

In fact, the figures on the length of road works completed till end 2009 show that maximum gains have been made by the Bimaru states in the Hindi heartland, including Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. And other states like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Orissa have also fared relatively better than the other states. And the top ranking states in term of rural road built by end 2009 were Rajasthan (44,110 km), Uttar Pradesh (33,284 km), Madhya Pradesh (32,770) Andhra Pradesh (15,484), Chhattisgarh (14,690), Maharashtra (13,663) and Orissa (13,378 km).

But the cumulative numbers hide the churn that has taken place in the rural road sector in the more recent years. To highlight the most recent trends in 2010-11 we will take a look at the targets and achievements made by the states in the three major components of the PMGSY, namely the number of habitats connected, the length of new roads built, and the length of rural roads upgraded. While the target indicated are for the full fiscal year the actual achievements refers to the progress achieved in the the first nine months ending December 2010.

The reports on the targets and achievements of the rural road scheme in 2010-11 show that the states focus vary across the different components of the PMGSY scheme. While some states like Haryana, Karnataka and Punjab have shifted attention from building new rural roads to upgradation and renewal of existing rural roads, other states like Jharkhand and Uttarakhand have focussed almost exclusively on building new connectivity in rural areas while ignoring the upgradation and renewal aspects.

A look at the first aspect, namely the number of habitats to be newly connected, the numbers show that the most ambitious targets for 2010-11 has been laid by Bihar (780 habitats), followed by Orissa (400), West Bengal (350), Jharkhand (300), Madhya Pradesh (300) and Assam (250). And when it comes to the targets achieved in the first nine months of the fiscal year, the maximum new habitats connected were also in Bihar (600), followed by Jharkhand (405), Assam (354), Madhya Pradesh (306), Orissa (170) and West Bengal (159). Some of the states even surpassed the targets set for the entire year in the first nine months. These included Assam(142%), Jharkhand (135%), Gujarat (112%) and Madhya Pradesh (102%).

In the case of the length of the new rural roads built, the scenario was a bit different. Leading the list of the states with the maximum length of new rural roads planned was Bihar (3,381 km, followed by Orissa (2,000), Assam (1,750), West Bengal (1,700), Jharkhand (1,300) and Madhya Pradesh (1,200). But the data on new roads completed during April-December 2010-11 show that the biggest achiever was Madhya Pradesh (2,478 km), followed by Orissa (1,557), Bihar (1,412), Jharkhand (1,224), Assam (1,093) and West Bengal (728 km). Nine states have surpassed their annual target within the first nine months; they include Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland, Mizoram, Uttaranchal and Manipur.

Coming to the third aspect, namely the upgradation and the renewal of rural roads, the numbers show that the states with the most ambitious targets laid out for 2010-11 were Uttar Pradesh (2,700 km), Madhya Pradesh (2,000), Rajasthan (1,280), Orissa (1,052), Andhra Pradesh (1,000), Karnataka (1,000) and Tamil Nadu (1,000 km). When it came to target achieved in the first nine months of the fiscal year also it was Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh which topped the list, having upgraded 2,903 km and 2,489 km of rural roads, respectively.

Other states that have upgraded the maximum length of rural roads in the current fiscal year include Tamil Nadu (1,678 km), followed by Rajasthan (1,286 km), Andhra Pradesh (1,098 km), Karnataka (1,017) and Orissa (1,000). And when it comes to the share of the annual target achieved in the first nine months of the year, the biggest strides were made by ten states which had already achieved the targets for the full year. They include Tamil Nadu (168%), Himachal Pradesh (131%), Madhya Pradesh (124%), Kerala (113%), Andhra Pradesh (110%), Uttar Pradesh (108%), Karnataka (1025), Rajasthan (100%), Maharashtra (100%) and Haryana (100%). Clearly, the rural road scheme has surpassed all parameters usually used to judge the success of centrally funded schemes.