Paved intentions

Oh the song of the future has been sung… We’ve opened up the soil/ With our teardrops and our toil.” The story of the Zaranj-Delaram road link would add blood to the teardrops and toil. Workers,engineers and soldiers have died in that elemental human endeavour to ease movement,governance and commerce — road building. They have won this round. But the enemies of civilisation do never give up. And the road that Pranab Mukherjee handed over to Afghanistan — that provides India with direct access to Kabul through the Chabahar port in Iran,one that will at last allow India large-scale trade with Afghanistan — will need protection from the Taliban who had targeted the project.

Roads and railways remain synecdochic of the settling of the American West,the taming of the Canadian wilderness. Centuries earlier,the Romans had realised the necessity of permanent roads in place of dirt tracks to help military movement and commerce. Thus also Sher Shah’s rebuilding of the Sadak-e-Azam (the Grand Trunk Road). The triumph of Roman engineering is the survival of many of these roads till date,roads that in their youth allowed the Roman Empire to expand,stabilise itself and prosper. Sher Shah’s road,once stretching from Narayanganj district in present Bangladesh to Peshawar (and briefly on to Kabul),formed the bulk of NH 2; much after the East India Company had expanded and entrenched its rule by it. Sadak is a pillar of rural development and a raging demand in India. Taking off from Vajpayee’s Golden Quadrilateral,roads are changing the façade and underbelly of rural India.

Ironically,the very roads that the Romans built had brought the barbarians who sacked Rome; the GT Road made Delhi vulnerable in the Mughal twilight. Invaders and victims have changed qualitatively since,but the Zaranj-Delaram stretch,so strategically and commercially important,is hoped to have a less sanguinary career.