Road ahead -The Telegraph

I have been living in Kerala for the last several years and keeping a close watch on National Highway 47. The highway has changed a lot in the last few years. Today, it is more a place for commuters and vendors than for vehicles. Innumerable fish and meat vendors occupy the waysides. They and their customers have turned the highway into a busy marketplace, which stinks to high heaven, thanks to the decaying fish and meat. The wastes piled by the roadsides attract stray dogs. Often, the dogs get killed and drivers meet with accidents trying to avoid the dogs coming in the way of their vehicles.

The highway has become more dangerous after it was dug up for laying water-supply lines and optical fibre cables. The owners of cranes make good profit by lifting the heavy vehicles that land up in the huge craters created by the workers. When one drives along this highway of potholes, one is assaulted with the sight of scattered garbage, open drains, muddled traffic, dirty vendors and food corporation outlets, whose queues extend several metres into the road.

It is dangerous to drive a vehicle on any of Kerala’s roads. The state spends huge sums on road repair, but only about 40 per cent of the amount spent gets reflected in the work done.

Recently, ‘newspaper technology’ has been adopted in Kerala for repairing roads. The workers fill potholes with metal or sand and then cover them with newspapers dipped in coal tar. This patchwork hardly lasts for a week, and then the team is ready with a fresh bundle of old newspapers for starting another bout of work at the same spot. Road repair has thus become a never-ending process, siphoning off huge sums of money from the State exchequer.

But I would like to know whether India has applied for a patent for its newspaper technology used in road repair. For all we know, America or Japan might be interested in this.


K.A. Solaman The Telegraph, Calcutta, Dated 23 Feb 2010