Delhi-Meerut Expressway, the widest expressway in India, has been completed and opened to the public. The Expressway reduces the travel time between Delhi and Meerut from 2.5 hours to 45 minutes. “Delhi Meerut Expressway has now been completed & opened to traffic. We have full filled our promise of reducing travel time between Delhi – Meerut from 2.5 hours to 45 minutes,” tweeted Union Minister for Road Transport, Nitin Gadkari.
Delhi Meerut Expressway has now been completed & opened to traffic. We have full filled our promise of reducing travel time between Delhi – Meerut from 2.5 hours to 45 minutes. #PragatiKaHighway pic.twitter.com/OgFyOJ5QLs
— Nitin Gadkari (@nitin_gadkari) April 1, 2021
Rajendra Agrawal, the three times Member of Parliament from the Meerut constituency, thanked the Union Transport Minister for the completion of the project, and Nitin Gadkari also applauded his efforts to make the project possible.
दिल्ली-मेरठ एक्सप्रेस-वे के रिकॉर्ड टाइम में पूरा होने में मेरठ के सांसद श्री @MP_Meerut जी ने अपनी ओर से हर संभव सहयोग किया है। मेरठ के लोग, सांसद, विधायक, व अन्य जनप्रतिनिधियों का हार्दिक अभिनंदन जिनके असंख्य सहयोग और प्रयासों से यह संभव हो पाया। https://t.co/whLZrxokjC
— Nitin Gadkari (@nitin_gadkari) April 1, 2021
The Delhi-Meerut highway was first envisaged in NCR Transport Plan 2021, which was notified in September 2005. In 2006, the then finance minister P Chidambaram announced the project in the budget speech, but it could not come to the ground till May 2014 when UPA was ousted from power.
However, under the Modi government, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) cleared the project in July 2014, and, in less than 7 years, the widest expressway of the country is complete.
The project comprises four phases:
Nizamuddin Bridge to Delhi-UP Border – competed in April 2018
Delhi-UP Border to Dasna – Full stretch completed in March 2021
Dasna to Hapur – Competed in September 2019
Dasna to Meerut – Completed in March 2021
Under the leadership of Nitin Gadkari, the country is building 37 Km of highways per day, which is a world record. Road infrastructure in India will be comparable to the United States and Europe by 2024, said Nitin Gadkari.
“When Modiji asked me which ministry I wanted, I had asked for Roads ministry. He had asked me to remember that Roads ministry didn’t feature in the top five performing ministries at that time. But I told him, I didn’t want any of the top five ministries, I wanted Roads because I felt I could do a good job here. Today I felt like sharing this,” said Nitin Gadkari in a function to celebrate the achievement of India in the road transportation sector.
The Modi government made significant investments in public transport, highway construction, railways, waterways, and air connectivity. The large public investment in infrastructure was supported by the oil bonanza which the government got in its initial years due to a slump in crude prices. The investment in the road construction sector by the UPA government was very low because various welfare programs like MGNREGA had constrained them from financing infrastructure building.
Prime Minister Modi is also making efforts to turn infrastructure into an electoral issue. He inaugurated a slew of infrastructure projects in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Assam before these states went for 2021 assembly polls.
For decades, elections in India have been fought on rampant populism, while freebies became the only criteria for winning. Akhilesh Yadav came to power in UP in 2012 solely on the promise of Laptop distribution; Congress won three states in 2018 (MP, Rajasthan, and Chattishgarh) on the promise of farm loan waiver. The UPA government tried to wash away all its sins with the Right to Food Act (although it lost).
The allure of freebies has always driven a large part of the population towards the political parties and the fighting election in the name of freebies has been internalized in the political system. Pickup any manifesto of political parties, the majority of the pages are filled with promises of freebies.
If infrastructure creation becomes a major electoral issue in the country, the states ruled by the BJP as well as those ruled by the opposition would invest heavily in building roads, bridges, and so on. And this will start a virtuous cycle of the investment-driven economy, instead of a freebies-led demand-driven economy that kept the country backward for decades.
