Tractors, schoolchildren on bicycles, delivery men on overloaded motorbikes, and three-wheelers groaning with fresh vegetables are all a common sight on the 4.6-kilometer (km) road from Muhali village to the nearest town, Sehore.

Three once-isolated villages - Muhali, Shekhpura, and Wahidganj - in Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh State, Central India, are now connected to the Sehore market, and to schools, colleges, hospitals, and other modern amenities.

These villages, like all other villages in the state, are being connected by all-weather roads, in accordance with the guidelines laid down in India's Rural Roads Program, launched in 2000.

Bringing traffic to the hinterland

 

Poor road connectivity has been a main underlying cause of poverty in India, impeding economic growth of India's rural areas. In support of the government's Rural Roads Program, ADB approved a $400 million loan for Rural Roads Sector I Project in November 2003. At that time, about three quarters of people in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, two of India's poorest states, lived in rural areas that, for the most part, did not have all-weather roads. Many relied on earth tracks, unsuitable for motorized traffic and impassable during the rainy season.

"The project has connected rural communities in the two states to markets, district headquarters, and other centers of economic activity leading to overall socioeconomic development of project villages," said Hun Kim, country director of India Resident Mission of ADB.

When the project was completed in 2009, a total of 9,574 km of rural roads had been constructed, directly benefiting 3,207 towns and villages, or about 11 million people. Between December 2006 and December 2008, in sample project villages, the number of households living below the poverty line decreased by 4.7%, 1.8% more than in villages not affected by the new roads.