Late last week Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari announced that the Union government was going ahead with its proposal for a ‘ring road’ in Goa and that Rs 12,000 to 15,000 crore was being set aside for the purpose. According to the proposal, the ring road will be for vehicles entering Goa from Maharashtra, allowing them to head towards Karnataka without entering the main areas of the State. In other words, a vehicle that enters Goa from Patradevi in the north and wishes to head towards Anmod and beyond wouldn’t need to pass through Porvorim as is currently the case and could use the new ring road.
Currently, a vehicle that wishes to take that route would need to take the main north-south national highway (NH 66) up to Merces (Panjim) and then head east via the Old Goa bypass towards Ponda and beyond. At present, this route has bottlenecks at Porvorim and later at Corlim, Bhoma, and beyond. However, with the Porvorim flyover and the widening of the route between Panjim and Ponda, those bottlenecks will reduce significantly making the need for a bypass not really necessary at least for the next few years.
Presently traffic from the Konkan that needs to get to places like Belagavi and Hubballi has only a few options for getting to NH 4 which runs between Pune and Bengaluru -- the Anuskura Ghat, the Phonda Ghat, the Ambolim Ghat, the Chorla Ghat and the Anmod Ghat. Traffic that needs to head towards Belagavi and Hubballi will enter Goa depending only on the condition of the Anmod Ghat road. If that is in bad shape, they will avoid Goa altogether and simply use another route without entering Goa.
For Gadkari’s ring road plan to be viable, the government will need to fix the Anmod Ghat road first. The project was one of three linear projects that were challenged before the Supreme Court and was granted provisional approval. More than that, however, the success or failure of the road will depend on its alignment, which hinterland towns it connects and which it leaves out and what impact it could have on local communities.
As of now, the Union Minister has said that he’s keeping the proposed alignment under wraps as he frankly admitted that no sooner the alignment is made public the local political class will rush to buy land along the alignment, hinting that taking undue advantage of government projects was not uncommon in the State.
Therein lies the catch. Finalising the alignment behind closed doors, has its advantages, as elicited above, but it also leaves the people out of the planning process. It gives root to grievances as is currently on display in the case of Bhoma, where the people are demanding a bypass despite an assurance from the minister that a specially designed 76-metre span was being installed in order to ensure there is no need to demolish the temple, as well as was on display in the case of the Western Bypass passing through Nuvem-Mungul, Benaulim where the people were demanding the bypass on stilts but the government was insisting that it was not possible.
Leaving people out of the planning process will only end up alienating those for whom the project is actually being built and will mean that crucial local inputs on alternate routes or local idiosyncrasies would be missed out on. More than that they will drive a wedge between the people and the government for whom the latter is claiming to be acting on behalf.
