R&B Department’s 6 Sins: Economics of J&K’s ‘Tora Bora Roads’

Srinagar: Public roads across Kashmir today look like the roads of hell. The black-topping of roads undertaken in the last one to three years have, unbelievably, deteriorated beyond imagination. Most of the old roads are degenerated, severely potholed and require to be re-laid.

Important roads of Srinagar city like the Airport Road, the Boulevard, the roads around the city’s key hospitals are in a bad shape. The much-needed timely maintenance doesn’t happen in time for inefficient and time-consuming procedures of contracting and execution. There is barely a system of engineers supervising quality standards when contractors lay roads.

In Budget 2021-22, Public Works, including Roads and Buildings have been allocated 16.78 % of the total Capital Budget of Rs 24,363 crore. General public and prominent civil society actors are calling for strong monitoring, accountability and value for money in the black-topping and maintenance of roads in Srinagar and rest of the valley.

Despite huge budgetary allocations, the Roads and Buildings Department is usually unable to spend the funds in time as per the stipulated guidelines.

Economic experts engaged with by Ziraat Times maintain that poor quality of roads has huge economic costs for Kashmir – they inhibit economic productivity across all the three sectors of industries, agriculture and services. That, in turn, might well be constraining even the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) by several percentage points.

Strikingly, the development framework of the R&B Department is all about annual outputs and programme targets. There is barely any institutional framework that could help in tracking quality standards, supervision and results.

In this report, Ziraat Times takes a look at the structural issues that result in low spending, abysmal quality assurance and faster degeneration of public roads in J&K, particularly in the temperate Kashmir region.

Sin No. 1: No Strategic Vision

The R&B Department doesn’t have a strategic vision document which could stipulate a goal to attain within a certain period of time in terms of development of public roads. The current system is mostly annual planning-based, disjointed with other development initiatives or project-centric, largely falling under centrally-sponsored schemes. As a consequence, there is no standardisation of quality in the development and maintenance of roads in Kashmir. Coordination mechanisms between departments like Irrigation and Flood Control, Urban Environment and Engineering Department, and mostly ad hoc, sans any solid institutional framework of designated roles and responsibilities.

Sin No.2: The Annual Work Cycle

The fundamental problem is the work cycle for the development of public assets, including public roads in J&K, particularly in the winter zone of Kashmir valley and winter zone parts of Jammu region. In the current cycle, the process of preparing project proposals, approving annual budgets, contracting, actual execution is so tedious and time-consuming that most of the civil works are usually started towards late summer or autumn.

Consequently, most of the crucial work, like macadamization, is done in haste, mostly in temperatures which are not technically conducive to macadamization work, thereby adversely compromising the quality of work.

Sin No. 3: Lowest bidder planning legacy

One of the most serious structural challenges that undermines good quality work is the lowest bidder contracting system. There is barely a system in place in J&K to ensure that the lowest bid contracting offers abide by the stipulated guidelines in quality standards for laying new or maintaining old roads. As a consequence, the material used by contractors in constructing roads is usually of low quality, and not abiding by the stipulated and acceptable standards.

Sin No. 4: Lack of technical supervision and monitoring during construction

It is a standard practice for contractors in Kashmir to develop roads with minimum or no engineering supervision. In ideal conditions, the contractors are supposed to be carefully monitored for the works being executed. In most cases of macadam laying, the basic requirements of sloping and drainage to avoid water retention and seepage through the road surface are not followed. Consequently, water retention causes havoc with the road surface within no time.

Sin No. 5: One of the highest rate of degeneration and maintenance costs

If the pattern of public spending is closely studied in Kashmir region, what emerges is that the region has a high rate of annual degeneration of roads. The financial resources spent per kilometre year-to-year basis is too high too. Almost every road newly laid with macadam requires to be relaid in two to three years time. While the department has recently experimented with laying concrete roads along the Srinagar Airport Road, assuming that the material would survive harsher conditions, experts believe that the department needs to simply follow the existing best practices being followed in the advanced temperate regions with climatic and soil conditions similar to that of Kashmir.

According to experts, most pavements do not fail because of design factors such as thickness, but usually because of materials problems or environmental distresses such as oxidation, thermal cracking, and subgrade softening in asphalt pavements, and freeze-thaw damage, joint deterioration (spalling), and scaling in concrete pavements.

Sin No. 6: Lack of system for basic maintenance

Every winter there is damage to roads in Kashmir due to various reasons. Potholes developed during winter, in ideal conditions, would require immediate maintenance. Presently, there is no mechanism in the Department to ensure speedy maintenance either through the creation of an internal maintenance and fast response wing or through pre-empanelled contracting system. Consequently, the public have to bear huge inconveniences for months together before the basic maintenance of potholes is undertaken towards the summer. This needs to change, and the R&B Department needs to create a rapid response unit for fixing potholes with pre-alloted funds and an empaneled group of contractors through an advance bidding process.

Ziraat Times Queries to R&B Department

In order to have R&B Department’s views on this matter, Ziraat Times sent an email to the offices of Commissioner/ Secretary to the Government, Chief Engineer (R&B) Kashmir, Additional Secretary/to the Government, Additional Secretary/to the Government, Director Planning, Director Finance, Deputy Secretary, Deputy Secretary (Law), Under Secretary, Assistant Director Planning, requesting information about the following. However, no information has been received till date.

1. Globally-recommended quality and maintenance standards used in building public roads.
2. Quality assurance systems in place to ensure that contracts and incharge engineers follow the established guidelines and standards.
3. Reasons for not using stone tiles (factory made) at a mass scale on roads vulnerable to high water penetration, frost, and general degradation.
4. Instances when contractors/responsible engineers have been penalized for works not following the set standards.
5. The total annual budget (both revenue and capital budgets) available for Jammu and Kashmir provinces in 2017-18 and 2018-19.
6. Financial resources spent in terms of Rs/km on macadamization of roads in Kashmir province.

Officials documents reveal that under Central Road Fund (CRF) scheme, since its inception, 297 projects at an estimated cost Rs 4309.25 crore have been sanctioned Rs. 1166.85 crore stands have been utilized ending 03/2018 and 76 schemes stands completed.

Year-wise details of schemes sanctioned, as per R&B’s official documents, are as under:

SNo.	Year	No. of schemes sanctioned	Estimated cost	Expdt Ending 03/2018	Completed
				(Rs. in crores)
01	2000-08	60	43597.98	41296.83	54
02	2008-09	16	16232.11	16706.34	10
03	2009-10	8	9219.93	9022.23	3
04	2010-11	11	13121.00	12353.09	6
05	2011-12	0	0.00	0.00	0
06	2012-13	5	4640.75	2783.68	1
07	2013-14	8	11066.80	4780.61	0
08	2014-15	17	34741.00	11203.97	2
09	2015-16	25	78556.00	11034.46	0
10	2016-17	72	101923.36	7503.11	0
11	2017-18	75	117826.00	Not available	0
	TOTAL	297	430924093	11684.32	76

What research studies on Kashmir’s road quality says

A recent research study titled “Road Construction, Maintenance Challenges and their Solutions in Kashmir”, undertaken by Rashid M, Bhat SH and Bahsir IA (Department of Civil Engineering, Lovely Professional University) has identified several solutions for addressing the rapid deterioration and maintenance of public roads.

1. The cement mainly Chunam and Ferro-cement used in the construction of rigid pavements should have the initial curing time of less than 2.5 h and final setting time of not less than 5.2 h. The aggregates of granite and carbonate rocks can be used.
2. The sub-base thickness of not less than 0. 5 m should be used to prevent frost heave and differential settlements.
3. The construction of toe-walls mainly the mass gabion walls to prevent the low-amount landslide debris from entering the road that may damage road pavement and drainage.
4. The cut-off drains with trapezoidal cross-section should be provided at numerous places for better drainage.
5. To arrest relatively loose soil, catch fences mainly of brick, cement mortar or stones that are abundant available can be used.
6. To prevent individual cracking caused due to penetration of moisture because of prolonged rainfall, crack sealing comprising of jute fiber mixed with cut-back bitumen can be used.
7. To repair large distressed area, the patch work can be done, fog seals constituting asphalt emulsions and water, chip seals in the form of bituminous layer and slurry seals bituminous emulsions can be used for surface treatment.
8. Increasing vegetation is the effective method to prevent soil erosion, snow drifting and weathering
9. To prevent snow drifting, the snow fences can be constructed and the roads have to be placed parallel to the wind direction.
10. The blind ditch can be constructed, and the permeable geotextile can be introduced on the top surface and the side of seepage layer to allow seepage into the ditch. The bottom and sides must be impermeable to prevent seepage into the embankment.
11. The insulated multiple-drainage outlets, snow walls and culvert can be used. The wall height should not be less than 3.7 m.
12. A flexible drainage can be used in landslide prone areas, because small cracking will not affect their operation.

What civil society actors have to say about road problems of Kashmir

Dr: Raja Muzaffar Bhat

Water retention on the roads is a major cause of degeneration of roads as there is no proper drainage system in place. The road gets damaged mostly at these places due to water accumulation which, in turn, destroys Bitumen layers.

• Chocked drains due to plastic accumulation.
• Haphazard construction of shops and the commercial establishment is also responsible for the destruction of roads as this also causes waterlogging.
• Use of inferior material while preparing Bitumen in Hotmix Plants.

Possible Solutions

1. Proper drainage system along all the roads should be in place.

2. Construction of Shops should be banned near roadsides and the same be allowed to be constructed at some designated places even in Rural areas which are outside Municipal Limits. Rural Development Department, PWD (R&B) must act against such construction.

3. Checks and balances by 3rd party agency that would monitor Hotmix plants and laying of Bitumen on Road surfaces when the roads get macadamized.

4. Compulsory Cleaning small drains at least thrice a year .

Moreso, the leveling of road surface is also an issue. PWD Engineers don’t check this while roads are constructed or repaired. This irregular leveling holds water and that destroys the road surface.