Rural Roads and Sustainability in Nepal

Rural Roads and Sustainability in Nepal

(Published in the 29^th Issue of the JICA Aumni Association of Nepal's Milan magazine in December 2002)

A Technical Paper by 

 Bhim Upadhyaya

BACKGROUND

Road development in rural countryside has been a priority sector in Nepal for decades. Politicians and planner all alike have given emphasis in developing sufficient road network in rural areas of Nepal. Almost 70% of the annual allocation from the government in rural development has been earmarked for road building. A 20 years Agriculture Perspective Plan (APP) has identified the lack of adequate road network in rural area as the main hurdle in boosting agriculture development. Therefore, the APP has made recommendation of building additional 6200 km of roads in 12 years’ time period (from 1996) in Nepal and estimated 20% of the incremental allocation for APP implementation for roads construction and maintenance. The total cost of incremental road investment has been estimated at NRs 12 billion at the rate of yearly investment of NRs 1 billion for building 500km of road each year. From the beginning of Ninth Plan 1996-2001, HMG has started implementing APP as its main economic plan. Thus roads has received high importance for agriculture development in Nepal from the time of APP formulation. This article takes an effort to discuss the sustainability issue in various rural roads development programs and tries to shed light on how to make the roads particularly the rural ones sustainable.

PLANNING PROCESS

Planning of rural roads in Nepal does not have very clear standard methodology though there are several school of thoughts in rural road planning and design methodology. At national level as recommended by the APP which was formulated with assistance from Asian Development Bank, the density of roads is the main criterion. There is another road development Plan called Priority investment Plan that was also formulated by HMG has selected transport cost and internal rate of return as the criteria in investing on roads development. Since the beginning of the Ninth Plan and its main focus poverty reduction as its prime objective, generation of employment in rural areas which are also potential and existing production pocket of agriculture goods and for promotion of agriculture development, the only criteria of IRR is not justifiable as far as rural roads are concerned.

Of lately preparation of district transport master plans have been started by most of district development committees. Almost 55 districts have their district transport long-term plan thus far. Most of the donors agencies have started internalize the preparation of transport plans as precondition to funding agreement. However it has been found difficult to follow the master plans thus formulated by the districts in the government and local bodies project. In addition, the optimum district wise density of rural road network has not been fixed in Nepal.

DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

There has been debate on as to what standard and technology are suitable for rural road development in Nepal. The history of development of road technology has been always in the concept of highways. Almost all planner and engineers are trained and educated in abroad with foreign technology on highway design. Those who are even trained in Nepal also follow technology developed and suitable for highways and foreign plain terrain.

In search for appropriate design and technology for rural hills, there have a number of planning, design, and construction practices adopted in the past. From all these practices, the best practices have been now –a- days adopted. The terrain friendly i.e. by not disturbing its topography, and its neighboring residents and uphill and downhill cultivating land or field. The road is so designed and planned to construct that the local people particularly poor get direct regular and sustained employment   for years through the infrastructure activities. The use of big tools and equipment is put to a minimum in order to create, as much employment opportunity is made available as possible. Blasting materials and explosives are discouraged in the construction. Users committees are formed from among roadside dwellers’ for management of construction activities, day-to-day operation, and management of road when it is completed and opened for traffic.

Though increase of road density to double has been the need in Nepal, the cost of road construction is relatively very high for Nepal being a mountainous country. Search for low cost road construction has been going in Nepal. To justify what is a low cost has been always an issue. Initial investment cost could be higher but it does not necessarily mean that the road is high cost road. The management and operation cost sometimes is cheaper for those roads built with high initial capital cost. The low cost roads can prove to be high cost road in operation and management point of view. Thus in Nepal appropriate technology and design of roads is warranted. Nepal has been experimenting a number of pilot projects to come to a consensus regarding  appropriately planning, designing, construction technology and maintenance and operation management of roads.

PROGRAMS

After the restoration of democracy in 1990, development of rural roads got the top priority. Village Development Committees, District Development Committees, different line departments of HMG with assistance from a number of donor agencies. Department of Roads, Department of Irrigation, Department of Agriculture, Department of Housing and Building Construction, District and Village Dev Committees and others have been planning and implementing rural roads in Nepal countryside. The modality, standards and quality of roads thus implemented and managed by these various agencies vary a lot. However, Ministry of local development and the agencies under its jurisdiction are the major ones to plan and implement rural roads programs in Nepal. The table 1 below provides a glimpse of major programs their objectives under MLD and DOLIDAR.                                               

Table 1: Major Rural Roads Programs under MLD

Project	Objective	Funding by	Duration	Area covered	Cost
RCIW	§  Enable poor people to improve their food security in some food deficit districts of Nepal on a sustainable basis; §  Create Rural Infrastructures	WFP/GTZ/HMG	1996-2004	31 food deficit districts	Rs 3370 Million
RIP	§  Rural road maintenance Capacity enhancement of local bodies; §  Preparation of a follow on rural infrastructure project	WB/HMG/DDC	1999-2003	8 district	Rs 394 Million
SBP	§  Improve rural access in the hilly and mountainous areas	SDC/HMG	For last 27 years	56 hill districts	Series of phase-wise funding
LDCP	§  Provide access to market centers through construction of low-cost rural roads and trails	HMG	For last 24 years	75 districts	Series of phase-wise funding
ARP	§  Provide access from farm to market in agriculture pocket areas; §  Increase agriculture productivity through year round transportation of agriculture inputs and outputs	HMG	1997-2018	64 districts	Rs 12,000 Million
RRMF	§  To support local institutions in the maintenance of rural roads.	HMG	From 2001	All districts having road network	Series of phase-wise funding
RAP	§  Provide access in the rural areas; §  More secure and sustainable rural livelihood and improve physical welfare of the poor and disadvantaged people in hilly area.	DFID/ HMG	2001-2006	6 poor districts	Rs  3,300 Million
DRSP	§  Creating the capacity at district and village level to manage the transport sector in an effective, local resource based and affordable way	SDC/HMG/DDC	1999-2006	6 districts	Rs 484 Million

Note: RCIW: Rural Community Infrastructure Works, RIDP: Rural Infrastructure Dev Project, RIP: Rural Infrastructure Project, SBP: Suspension Bridge Project, LDCP: Local Construction Dev. Project, ARP: Agriculture Roads Project, RRMF: Rural Road Maintenance Fund, RAP: Rural Access Program, DRSP: District Road Support Program.

IMPLEMENTING AGENCIES

Though there are several agencies involved in planning, construction implementation and management and operation of rural roads  for example: DOR, DOLIDAR, DDCs, VDCs, Municipalities, Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives, Department of Forestry, Department of Irrigation, Nepal Electricity Authority, Department of Housing and Building Construction who plan and implement roads from the budget allocation earmarked to them, Local Bodies and DoLIDAR has been the major resource consuming agencies for last couple of years. The standard developed by DOLIDAR and approved by the HMG is being followed now. Still, it is always a matter of compliance to the standards so set. Monitoring aspect is far from satisfactory.

MANAGEMENT AND OPERATION

Management of road infrastructure in the rural areas after it is built has always been an issue to tackle properly. Local road users groups which were formed for construction are managing the operation and maintenance of some roads  in Nepal. Palpa, Dhading, Dolakha, Parbat, Rupandehi, Ilam, are some of the districts where local road users groups are formed to manage maintenance by collecting tolls from the vehicle plying in some of the roads. But the toll amount collected in a year by such roads is not found enough for proper maintenance especially when there is a big damage. Otherwise in the rest of the roads in Nepal are left to fate of nature care for management until there is an allocation made from somewhere maybe HMG, Local Bodies or else for that particular fortunate district or the road.

SOME OUTSTANDING ISSUES

Even as a number of road development issues have been resolved in Nepal in the past , there are  yet some outstanding issues to be resolved. They may be as the following.

§  District wise optimum density of road network to be fixed.

§  Contribution of rural road construction to rural poverty reduction to quantify.

§  Correlation of investment on rural roads to employment generation to set.

§  Optimum mix of modality of road construction management i.e. whether through users groups or through private contractors to delineate.

§  Labor based versus Equipment use approach controversy in road building to be clearly laid down and complied based on the objective set for the particular project.

§  Compliance of norms, standards and directives for quality assurance and control to be ensured.

§  Monitoring and supervision of compliance of road management system put to strict effort.

§  Lack of proper know-how at local level managements to be under stood while designing a project to be implemented through local agencies.

§  Lack of Professional culture and practices in the rural road sector management to be mitigated through proper planning and implementation mechanism.

§  Lack of leadership in the sector at local and central level authority. to be properly understood for risk management.

§  Environment degradation and risk generation owing to indiscriminate road development to be disseminated to all levels, be it community, local or central government agencies.

§  Ownership rights of the rural road infrastructures to be legalized

§  Land acquisition and compensation to be addressed.

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Road development is a capital-intensive venture in Nepal. More than 80 % of the area in Nepal is geologically fragile hill and mountain. Human settlement is scattered and sporadic. Poverty incidence is very high in the rural countryside. Education and health facility and standard is very low in the rural region. Non-agriculture activity is very quite little. More than 95% of people in rural area get their livelihood by agriculture. Therefore the development of rural infrastructure particularly roads have important say and impact on the rural livelihood. Hence, while developing rural roads it should address the following societal effects.

• Participatory planning, implementation and management of roads.
• Employment generation for local people.
• Minimization of adverse impact from the development. Alternative livelihood opportunity for those who lose their traditional business or are rendered jobless by development impact as far as possible.
• Low cost, environment hospitable indigenous technology of design and construction.
• Low maintenance cost of operation.
• System development for local management of road operation by local community.
• Community empowerment along with road development.
• Planned development of road network with clear objectively verifiable indicators at every stage of development i.e. at output, outcome and impact levels.
• Professional culture for quality work to be strengthened.
• Human resource development for implementation and management of ever-increasing demand for road infrastructures.

CONCLUSIONS

Recognizing the economic, geological and social context of Nepal, the development approaches and modality or the technology thereof should be commensurate with its context. The roads, therefore, are vulnerable to frequent landslide triggered by floods, earthquakes, land use systems and other man made factors. Proper planning taking into consideration of the various factors for causing landslide is very necessary. The operability of roads with permissible degree of reliability is very important to continue agricultural business round the year. The condition of roads dictates the confidence of the farmers who are dependant on agriculture business. The year round transportation facility guaranteed by the operability of roads can also generate agro-based industries to flourish along side the agricultural production.

The roads so built are to be protected from the unwanted loss due to lack of maintenance and care is equally essential. Involvement of road users in road management is always an important aspect for rural roads.

Allocation of fund in regular basis has to be ensured for proper care of roads. Maintenance cost has to be managed already beforehand while in planning and construction phase. The roads, which are difficult for management in operation phase, must not be initiated.

Rigorous planning activity with proper quality control system in construction phase can avoid less import roads from being taken for implementation. Prevention is better than cure should be the key strategy in minimizing maintenance cost. Proper trainings on appropriate technology of design and construction should be made a regular activity.

Roads are lifelines for rural people. However, it should not be developed indiscriminately in rural Nepal, since the adverse impact of roads can sometimes cost beyond remediation. The sustainability of the rural roads thus has to be seriously taken into consideration so that the investment made on the sector is not futile and the adverse impact- economic or social-is minimized.