The BRO story of silent Progress Reforms in the aftermath of 2014
The Border Road organization BRO recently completed the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldi (DSDBO) road that connect Leh in ladakh to Daulat Beg oldi an important site from strategic perspective .The rapid construction and huge budget allotment for the BRO in the aftermath of 2014 is also seen as a possible trigger to Chinese continuous aggression and face-off with India .
One of the earliest decision which Modi government took after coming to throne was to provide general approval to direct 100 kilometers of forest area for construction and winding of roads near LAC. The Approval granted for construction on the western front in Himachal and Uttarakhand and on the eastern front in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim.
This approval helped BRO clear and fasten projects all along the LAC and removed the burden of external clearance from Ministry of Enviroment Goverment of India .Soon after the face-off with china in Doklam in 2017 this general approval was extended to all such army infrastructure development projects including fencing , parking ,outposts on border etc.
India constructed and extended around 4700 km of roads along china border in the past 6 six years A significant 32 Percent rise from the previous six years. Similarly, 14,450 m of bridges have been constructed in the past 6 years a whooping 98 percent rise from previous 6 years in the border areas. Road surfacing works which progressed at an average of 170 kilometres per year from 2008 to 2017 have averaged 380 kilometres per year in the last three years.
The previous governments under UPA 1 and UPA2 took a very conservative and nearsighted approach to deal with border area road construction even PM Man mohan Singh himself held the office in earlier year of his term but shows no sign of greater good for increasing accessibility to the border areas and hence its evident from their approach of negligence that development which must have taken place earlier is been taken up now due to strategic and visionary leadership under Modi goverment.
Another policy change which has occurred in the recent years is delegation of powers to the Director General (DG) of the BRO. In 2017, the DG, BRO was given the financial powers to spend up to Rs 100 crore for procurement of high quality construction equipment, including locally made as well as imported machinery. The BRO was also given the powers to engage large construction firms for turnkey projects. Even within the BRO, the Chief Engineer as well as Additional DG were given extra financial delegation powers to speed up stuck projects.
On India’s part, the India-China Border Roads (ICBR) project needs to be completed as soon as possible. Of the original 73 roads planned in 1999, half have been completed, with a lot of push coming between 2014 and 2018 via various government decisions and interventions. Roads like DSDBO holds a very important strategic importance and was in a cold bag since long .
