The Bharatmala Pariyojna (lit. 'India garland project') is an ongoing project that will interconnect 550 District Headquarters (from current 300) through a minimum 4-lane highway by raising the number of corridors to 50 (from current 6) and move 80% freight traffic (40% currently) to National Highways by interconnecting 24 logistics parks, 66 inter-corridors (IC) of total 8,000 km (5,000 mi), 116 feeder routes (FR) of total 7,500 km (4,700 mi) and 7 north east Multi-Modal waterway ports.[1] The project also includes development of tunnels, bridges, elevated corridors, flyovers, overpass, interchanges, bypasses, ring roads etc. to provide shortest, jam free & optimized connectivity to multiple places, it is a centrally-sponsored and funded Road and Highways project of the Government of India.[2] This ambitious umbrella programme will subsume all existing Highway Projects including the flagship National Highways Development Project (NHDP), launched by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998. Bharatmala is mainly focused on connecting remote areas and satellite cities of megacities such as Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad etc. The total investment for 83,677 km (51,994 mi)[3] committed new highways is estimated at ₹10.63 lakh crore (US$130 billion), making it the single largest outlay for a government road construction scheme (as of March 2022). The project will build highways from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and then cover the entire string of Himalayan territories - Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand - and then portions of borders of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar alongside Terai, and move to West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and right up to the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur and Mizoram.[2] Special emphasis will be given on providing connectivity to far-flung border and rural areas including the tribal and backward areas.
Other than NHDP related projects which are greenfield, there is Brownfield National Highway Projects which is a upgradation/widening of existing 4 lane highways into 6 lane highways which are not controlled access highways.[4] Many state highways have been converted to National Highways under this project.[5]
India's 6,215,797 km (3,862,317 mi) road network is second largest in the world, of which only 2% (~1,10,000 km) are national highways (NHs) carrying 40% road traffic.[6]Bharatmala phase-I will raise the NH connection to a total of 80% or 550 districts out of total 718 districts[7] from the current 42% or 300 districts connected to NH (dec 2017).[6] Mapping of Shortest Route for 12,000 routes carrying 90% of the India's freight, commodity-wise survey of freight movement across 600 districts, automated traffic surveys over 1,500+ points
across the country, and satellite mapping of corridors was done to identify upgradation requirements for Bharatmala.[1]
Central Road Fund (CRF) was created as a non-lapsable fund under the "Central Road Fund Act 2000", by imposing a cess on petrol and diesel, to build and upgrade National Highways, State roads, rural roads, railway under/over bridges etc., and national waterways.[10]
Impact
Bharatmala will significantly boost highway infrastructure:[1]
Raise 6 NC corridors to 50 corridors (6 NC and 44 EC)
Raise 40% freight to 80% freight on National Highways
Raise 300 districts to 550 districts connected by minimum 4-lane highways.
Components
National Highways Development Project (NHDP)
NHDP project covers 48,793 km (30,319 mi), including 28,915 km (17,967 mi) completed, 10,574 km (6,570 mi) under construction and 9,304 km (5,781 mi) left for award (as of May 2017).[11] The uncompleted projects under NHDP will also be subsumed in Bharatmala.[6] NHDP was meant to convert dirt roads into National Highways or any 1/2 lane roads into 4 lane national highways.
National Corridors (NC)
National Corridors of India (NC) are 6 high volume corridors, including 4 in Golden Quadrilateral and 2 in North–South and East–West Corridors, including Mumbai - Kolkata Highway (NH6), known as East Coast - West Coast Corridor, that carry 35% of India's freight.[6] Lane expansion to 6 to 8 laning, ring roads, bypasses and elevated corridors will be built in Bharatmala to decongest the National Corridors.[6] Logistics Parks will be set up along the NC.[6] Busiest stretches of National Corridors will be converted to the expressways.[6] 8,000 km (5,000 mi) inter-corridor and 7,500 km (4,700 mi) feeder routes will be built.[6] Additionally, 3,300 km (2,100 mi) of border roads and 2,000 km (1,200 mi) international highways will be built to connect 6 National Corridors to international trade routes.[6]
National Corridors Efficiency Program (NCEP)
National Corridors Efficiency Program (NCEP) entails 5,000 km (3,100 mi) phase-I decongestion of 185 choke points by 34 6-8 laning, 45 bypasses and 30 ring roads of 6 NC.[6][1][12]
Economic Corridors of India or Industrial Corridors of India, 44 corridors 26,200 km (16,300 mi) were identified and 9,000 km (5,600 mi) will be taken up in phase-I, they exclude 6 National Corridors, they include:[1] 66 8,000 km (5,000 mi) inter-corridors (IC) & 116 7,500 km (4,700 mi) feeder routes (FR) were identified for Bharatmala.[1][6]
Logistics parks entailing 45% of India's freight traffic have been identified to be connected by Bharatmala economic corridors (EC), to develop hub-and-spoke model where hub-to-hub transport can be done with 30 tonne trucks and hub-to-spoke transport can be done with 10 tonne trucks. Currently all transport is point-to-point in 10 tonne trucks (2017).[1][12]
Total budget₹692,324 crore (US$87 billion) for 5 years Bharatmala project from 2017 to 2022.[13]
₹157,324 crore (US$20 billion) existing NH projects subsumed under Bharatmala, such as incomplete National Highways, SARDP-NE, Externally Aided Projects (EAP, e.g. world Bank and ADB), and Left Wing Extremism roads (LWE).[6]
₹535,000 crore (US$67 billion) phase-I to be completed during 2017-dec 2019:[6][14][13]
₹209,000 crore (US$26 billion) through market borrowings.[13]
₹106,000 crore (US$13 billion) through private investments.[13]
₹219,000 crore (US$27 billion) through the Central Road Fund (CRF) and tolls:[13]
₹78,000 crore (US$9.8 billion) through allocation in the national budget,
₹60,000 crore (US$7.5 billion) through bonds,
₹25,000 crore (US$3.1 billion) through toll monetisation of 30 completed highways.
Implementation phases: 2017-2022
The plan envisages the construction of 83,677 km (51,994 mi) roads, including 34,800 km (21,600 mi) of additional highways and roads across the country,[3] apart from an existing plan of building 48,877 km (30,371 mi) of new highways by the National Highway Authority of India.[15] Bharatmala has synergy with Sagarmala.[16]
Phase 1: 34,800 km by December 2022
The total length of 34,800 km (21,600 mi) highways will be constructed under phase-I by December 2022, including 24,800 km (15,400 mi) of new highways and another 10,000 km (6,200 mi) currently under-construction remaining incomplete under NHDP, compared to 19 years it took to upgrade almost same length of National Highways under NHDP.[17][16][3][18]
3,300 km (2,100 mi) of border roads and 2,000 km (1,200 mi) to connect 6 national corridors to international trade routes, such as BIMSTEC, MIT and BIN (Bangladesh-India-Nepal).[6]
Multimodal logistics parks. It will make current corridors more effective & will improve connectivity with north east and leverage synergy with inland waterways.
Multi-modal logistics parks will provide seamless cargo transfer between Railways cargo, Inland Waterways, Air cargo, Dedicated Freight Corridors, Access-Controlled Expressways, National Highways, State Highways in a Hub and Spoke model.
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