December 28, 2013
`All-weather one kilometer road` in all the 3349 Gram Panchayats: West Bengal CM
West Bengal is all set to witness a unique movement – a brainchild of the Chief Minister Ms. Mamata Banerjee – next month on January 7, 2014. `Didi`, as we all know her, has conceived a novel idea for developing village roads. On January 7, 2014 roads will be created in 35,000 villages across the state simultaneously. The Chief Minister herself will participate in this grand occasion by laying the foundation of a road in one of the villages, assisted by the locals.
The Chief Minister has instructed all the 43 Ministers of the state cabinet, all the secretaries, government officials and Zilla Sabhadhipatis to come out of their comfort zones and visit villages more often. MPs and MLAs of Trinamool Congress have also been asked to participate in this endeavour.
Never before in the history of this country has such an initiative been taken. Two messages by the Chief Minister are clear from this initiative. Firstly, she means business when she talks about bring pace into the development work and letting go of laggardness. Secondly, she wants to create a bridge between the administration and the common people.
Mamata Banerjee had made a promise before the 2011 assembly polls that she will herself work to create village roads. We have seen how she toils hard to keep all her promises; this one will not be an exception too.
On her Facebook page the Chief Minister wrote:
In a unique initiative to develop rural connectivity, especially the farm-road network, the Government of West Bengal will launch on 7th January, 2014 starting of `all-weather one kilometer road` in all the 3349 Gram Panchayats of the State in a pulse mode.
In addition, four more rural roads in all Gram Panchayats will also be taken up for implementation where too, work will commence on the same day.
In all, 16,000 kilometers of village roads will be developed through this intervention.
Such an initiative has no parallel in the history of rural development in the country.
Besides this, West Bengal Highway Development Corporation has taken up an ambitious programme to upgrade and rehabilitate 1000 km. of state highway connecting National Highways. Separately, the Corporation has started work of four-laning of Dankuni to Chandannagar and from Chandannagar to Mogra.
I thought of keeping my facebook friends informed about these rural friendly decisions.
