The road show
For all the priority being given to construction and maintenance of roads, is the training infrastructure in this sector adequate?

By Meha Mathur
When the NDA dispensation under Atal Bihari Vajpayee embarked on the ambitious Golden Quadrilateral Project, for linking of the four metros, the idea of roads as central to economic development first grabbed the imagination of the nation as a whole. The Golden Quadrilateral envisaged building of 5,846 km of four-lane and six lane highways between the four metros, of which 5,766 km had been completed as of February 2010. The other major initiative was the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), launched in December 2000, with a view to “to provide connectivity, by way of an all-weather road (with necessary culverts and cross-drainage structures, which is operable throughout the year), to the eligible unconnected habitations in the rural areas, in such a way that all unconnected habitations with a population of 1,000 persons and above are covered in three years (2000-03) and all unconnected habitations with a population of 500 persons and above by the end of the Tenth Plan Period (2007).” (PMGSY website). It also stipulated that “In respect of the hill states and the desert areas as well as the tribal (Schedule V) areas, the objective would be to connect habitations with a population of 250 persons and above.”

Thrust Continued
These initiatives were lapped up by the new UPA govt. when it came to power, and the drive has continued unabated. The two parties might not see eye to eye on most other issues, but the fact that the UPA has continued the thrust given by the NDA to roads, speaks volumes about the centrality of roads in the nation’s development. The UPA Govt. went ahead with the task of completing the Golden Quadrilateral, and adopted the PMGSY as its own, to provide employment and to bring about rural rejuvenation, as part of its agenda of development with human face.

The minister for road transport and highways Kamal Nath has set an agenda of ‘20 km of roads per day’. At an event in October 2009, he had stated, “The govt. has set itself a task of constructing 7,000 Kms of roads every year, which requires that there should be work in progress of around 20,000 kms at any point of time.” The Eleventh Five Year Plan provides for completion for balance work of Golden Quadrilateral, and accomplishment of National Highway Development Project Phase III, and provides for budgetary support of `72,530 crore for central sector roads. And proposing the Union Budget 2010-2011, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee allotted `1.73 lakh crore to the transport sector, including roads, ports, airports and railways. The allocation for road transport went up from 17,520 crore to 19,894, an increase of 13 per cent.

With the kind of leaps in road development, the share of roads in freight traffic has gone up from 14 per cent in 1950-51 to 61 per cent in 2004-05, and its share in handling passenger traffic has gone up from 15 per cent in 1950-51 to 87 per cent by the end of Tenth Plan. It’s worth pondering, how is the manpower requirement of a sector, which is taking such giant strides, being met. Besides the inadequate road capacity to cater to the billion-plus population, the biggest grouse is the poor quality of roads. The sight of vanishing roads at the first downpour in monsoons is an annual feature, and an indicator of the jarring gap between the standards of road desired, and the kind of material and manpower input that goes into it.

Manpower Development-High End
Training in road construction and road repair and maintenance is provided at technical and administrative levels to engineers and supervisors. It is in the realm of research and expertise in machinery. For eg., IIT Madras, Chennai, has transportation engineering division, which provides specialisation to engineers in this area. It offers MTech., MS, and PhD with specialisation in transportation engineering. The Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), New Delhi, offers a two-year postgraduate course in Engineering of Infrastructure and Disaster Mitigation (Building/Roads) in association with Central Building Research Institute (CBRI). Besides that it offers short courses of about a week in areas like design, construction and maintenance of airfield, planning, design, construction & maintenance of rural roads, geotechnical and landslide investigations for highway projects, and urban and regional transportation Planning.

CRRI is the parent organisation of Transport Infrastructure Training Institute (TITI), Hyderabad, a constituent of National Academy of Construction (NAC). It conducts a one-year postgraduate diploma in construction project management. The course, run by the National Academy of Construction, has six months of classroom study and six months of industry exposure. It also imparts training to: 1) Engineers in Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak

Yojana (PMGSY) Programme, 2) Engineers of Panchayat Raj Department of Andhra Pradesh, under a programme sponsored by National Rural Road Development Agency (NRRDA), and 3) Engineers of Roads & Buildings (R&B) Department of Andhra Pradesh for planning, design, maintenance, evaluation and rehabilitation of roads, bridges and culverts etc. A candidate should have done ITI training, or should be an intermediate.

The Central Institute of Road Transport (CIRT), Pune, offers a number of courses in this field. These are:
Foundation Courses of four to eight weeks for management trainees who have been recruited to hold general management and functional positions. In these programmes the recruiting organisations often identify the training needs of the candidates.

Management Appreciation Programmes of four weeks for senior supervisors, who need managerial expertise in addition to technical expertise.

Short Duration Functional Programmes to impart training in areas like maintenance management, traffic management, materials management, and even human resource management, computer applications and
financial management.

In-Situ Programmes for a client organisation, to tackle certain problem areas.

Programmes sponsored by the ministry of road transport and highways.

The National Institute for Training of Highway Engineers (NITHE), NOIDA, imparts training to engineers from Central and State Govt. departments, public sector undertakings and private sector. Some of the programmes are: foundation courses for new recruits; refresher courses at all levels.

Missing Link
All these above-mentioned programmes cater to the needs of researchers, managers, engineers and supervisors, for their further enrichment. But where are the programmes for the workers, who actually constitute the building blocks of the road network? After all, if the Govt. is seeking to provide employment to millions of rural youth through its programmes like NREGA by employing them in construction of roads, there must be equal emphasis on their skill development to that effect. Sadly, that is missing. While the country has turned its attention to training of labour in building construction by running a number of dedicated programmes, unfortunately in road construction a similar thrust is missing. The trade does not figure on the list of NCVT designated trades, nor is it taken up by ITIs. (In contrast, road construction as a training area figures in some of the US skills institutes, wherein a candidates from weaker sections are provided a rigorous short-term training followed by a certificate to ensure job readiness). Agreed, where the numbers to be trained and employed run in millions, skilling would be a tough road ahead and the approach would be to treat the low-end manpower as dispensable. But employment without a holistic approach of skills development will prove as patchy a job, as majority of the roads in the country are.

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