Dubai: Opening up road connections to neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, increasing the rate of highway construction from the current length of 14km per month to about 30km per month in two years, linking all 101 rivers of India to form an effective inland waterway were some of the biggest highlights of a very constructive speech given by Nitin Gadkari the Indian Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping at the India Club tonight.
Gadkari who was enroute to Cairo for the inauguration of the new Suez Canal had a stopover in UAE and consented to meet the prominent members of the Indian community in Dubai.
“We have concrete plans to build a new India based on innovation, entrepreneurship, technology and governance and build a reliable system of surface transport that is inexpensive and efficient. We are already looking at bringing down the cost of transport by tapping into alternative fuel source such as bio compressed natural gas (CNG), bio fuel,bio diesel, ethanol and are also working on manufacturing hybrid buses for public transport. We want to convert waste into wealth, ” sauid Gadakari outlining a very ambitious vision of substainable development.
He talked about the government’s plan to energise the transport and power sector of the country by harnessing solar, hydro and thermal power to make power cheaper.
Nitin Gadkari Among some very ambitious road projects he mentioned construction of several expressways such as the Delhi-Meerut, Delhi-Ludhiana- Amritsar-Katra expressway, the Chennai-Bangalore and Nagpur-Mumbai expressway.
“I have always delivered what I have promised even when I was a minister in Maharashtra. I was able to give Mumbai and Pune its first expressway, build the Mahim-Worli bridge and constructed 80 flyovers in that city. You can be rest assured that work on the projects I am talking about has begun.”
He mentioned floating infrastructural bonds to raise money from overseas Indians for infrastructural development. “It is our vision to build a stronger country, fight poverty, unemployment, hunger, abolish untouchability and caste system and put and end to religious discrimination,” he said.
However, he conceded that there was tremendous work to be done although the mood was positive and joked that things could move only when Parliament was allowed to do its work. “When we came to power the GDP of the country was 4.2 per cent and today it is 7.5 per cent. It is work in progress,” he concluded, leaving the Indian diaspora here on an upbeat note.
