Bharatmala connecting India

Seamless connectivity is the need of the hour and Bharatmala Pariyojana through various planned corridors will bring connectivity, inclusivity, and prosperity in the country.

India has the second-largest road network in the world in terms of length. The National Highways (NHs) constitute about 2% of the total road network, but carry about 40% of the total road traffic. In order to improve the road connectivity in India, the government had introduced the National Highways Development Program (NHDP) in 1998, which has reached a certain level of maturity. It is now important to re-define road development and have a macro approach while planning expansion of the national highways network.

Earlier, highways development had not been planned with an economic perspective. It is required, therefore, that the origin and destination of vehicular traffic, particularly of freight, be the basis of construction for the bigger 4-laning/6-laning National Highways (NHs). Hence it was proposed to launch a new umbrella program with the primary focus of optimising the efficiency of the movement of goods and people across the country.

An ambitious project

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) envisaged an ambitious highway development program Bharatmala Pariyojana (BMP) which includes the development of about 65,000 km of national highways in two phases. Under Phase-I of BMP, the Ministry has approved the implementation of 34,800 km of national highways in five years with an outlay of Rs 5,35,000 crore. NHAI has been mandated the development of about 27,500 km of national highways under Phase-I of Bharatmala. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the BMP Phase 1 in October 2017. 

The progress

According to ICRA, around 59% of BMP phase I (20,632 km) was awarded and 7,375 km of road length has already been constructed till December 2021. Majority of the project awarding under BMP is undertaken by NHAI. “The BMP witnessed the highest award of 7,396 km in FY2018, after which the awarding activity slowed down due to multiple reasons,” says Vinay Kumar G, Assistant Vice President and Sector Head, Corporate Ratings, ICRA.

The unprecedented events arised after the Covid pandemic impacting the market coupled with land acquisition-related issues, hit roadblock to the execution plans of Bharatmala project. Due to Covid-induced disruptions, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL) faced some issues.

The Bharatmala Pariyojana Phase-I, initially proposed to be completed by 2022 will now be completed by 2027 and owing to the five-year delay, the estimated project cost has doubled from Rs 5.35 lakh crore to Rs 10.63 lakh crore.

After a lull in 2020-21, the construction of highways has seen a turnaround with the construction pace reaching 37 km per day during 2021-22. The Covid pandemic slowed down the project execution in the past years. However, the project execution pace needs to be scaled up to complete the remaining length of projects planned in the BMP program as per the revised timeline. Virendra D. Mhaiskar, Chairman & Managing Director, IRB Infrastructure Developers, highlights, “To my opinion, the developer should not only have encumbrance free Right of Way (ROW) of land, but also be made free from other issues like tree cutting, which invites environmental issue; rehabilitations of project affected people; underground or over ground utility shifting; other clearances which are critical for the success; and support from financial institutions will definitely facilitate achieving the set target in roads construction.”

Opportunities for stakeholders

The Bharatmala project has opened up a plethora of opportunities to the construction equipment and materials suppliers. The BMP projects have witnessed the involvement of many advanced plants and equipment in the construction of these projects. For example, Schwing Stetter India has supplied various types of equipment for the Bahartmala projects across the country such as concrete batching plants, concrete boom pumps, truck mixers, excavators and wheel loaders across many projects. “The Bharatmala project, a centrally sponsored umbrella program for developing road infrastructure  to the next level connecting 500 district head quarters, will be seeing a huge influx of construction equipment for the rapid and world class road infrastructure with a capital layout of US$ 140 billion. The demand creation was foreseen by Schwing and has been aptly prepared with expanded production capacity,” says V. G. Sakthikumar, Managing Director, Schwing Stetter India.

Some of the major BMP projects where Schwing Stetter machines involved are:

• North Corridor: Amristar-Jamnagar Expressway and Delhi-Mumbai Expressway - 14 batching plants, 6 boom pumps, 110 truck mixers.
• West Corridor: Maharashtra - MTHL project - 5 Batching plants, 3 boom pumps, 2 HDD.
• East Corridor: Ranchi Expressway - 6 batching plants, 15 SLM, 7 boom pumps and around 60 truck mixers. Raipur-Vizag Expressway: 3 boom pumps and 5 stationary pumps.

“We are continually supplying construction equipment to be deployed across the country,” Sakthikumar adds.

Materials like steel, cement, asphalt, aggregates and construction chemicals also play a major role in the construction of Bharatmala projects. This provides business opportunities to players of these segments. Narendra Dalmia, Director, Strata Geosystems (India), elaborates, “We provide an array of turnkey highway solutions from manufacturing and supply of material to its installation. The solutions are installation of RS Walls which includes StrataWall EC and StrataBlock^TM walls for bridge approach, embankment slope protection/erosion control, pavements stabilisation and optimisation, ground improvement and drainage.”

The BMP program has created a vast job opportunity at different levels. Kritika Singh, Sr. Manager, Invest India, says, “Bharatmala Pariyojana Phase-1 is expected to generate roughly 14.2 crore man-days of employment during the construction phase, and the increased level of economic activities, enabled by the development of Economic Corridor network shall lead to the generation of about 22 million permanent jobs.”

A Boon to logistics

The CCEA has mandated the MoRTH to develop 35 Multi-Modal Logistics Parks (MMLP) projects under Public Private Partnership (PPP) across the country. Also, the Bharatmala project will make current corridors more effective and will improve connectivity with north east and leverage synergy with inland waterways. The mission is aimed at reducing the logistics costs. Quicker movement is also likely to decrease the supply chain costs from the current average of 18% to 6%.

The road ahead

The pace of national highway construction in the country touched a record 37 km per day in 2020-21. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari recently announced the government is targeting a pace of 50 km per day for national highways’ construction in the country. According to him, the government is giving highest priority to developing the road network near the border areas of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir.

According to a recent Hindustan Times report, Alka Upadhyaya, Chairperson, NHAI, said that all the works under the BMP-Phase 1 will be awarded latest by 2024. In 2021-22, till February, NHAI awarded 3,290 km and expecting 5,000 km by end of the fiscal. In FY 2022-23, the NHAI aims to award works for another 10,000 km.

The Phase 2 of the BMP program will see development of 8,000 km length of highways across the country. D. K. Sen, Whole-time Director and Senior Executive Vice President (Development Projects), Larsen & Toubro says, “Approximately 8,000 km highway development has been planned in the Phase 2 of the Bharatmala Pariyojana which includes around 3,500 km expressways, 3,000 km of economic corridors and 1,500 km of inter-corridor routes which will give ample opportunities to construction companies to grow.”

Sakthikumar is positive on the Bharatmala project in spite of its delayed execution schedule. “The Bharathmala project to be completed by 2022 is delayed and will now be on until 2026. But the project witnessed a sea change in the freight corridor sector expansion, which is going to rapidly expand the transport viability across the country and thereby increase in businesses of the entire gamut of the various industries,” he says.

Sen is of the view, “The government has continued to show its dogged determination towards an infrastructure-led growth-oriented economy, setting a huge target of 25,000 km highway construction at close to 70 km/day in FY23, which will be a remarkable feat for both the government and the nation, if achieved.”

Speaking on faster project execution, Harendra Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, H.G. Infra Engineering, adds, “There is still space for planning, financing and working on a speedy dispute resolution system, land acquisition processes and minimising bureaucratic procedures and individual preferences. A single-window approval system, if introduced for road projects and any other infra projects, may reduce the time taken in lengthy processes. It will ease out procedures for approvals like forest clearance, environment clearance, labour license, installation of HSD outlet, and approval from Ministries like Railway for ROBs, etc.”

Though the ambitious mega connectivity project of Bharatmala delayed due to unprecedented situation of Covid and some procedural issues, the government is proactive to bring the project execution back on track and the next 5 years are expected to see light at the end of the tunnel.

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