Why roads, bridges in the state don’t last

Kuldeep Chauhan in Shimla

August 18 was an unusual day in the history of Himachal Pradesh: it received 102. 5 mm rainfall, the heaviest ever recorded in 24 hours in this tiny hill state.

The deluge that followed exposed all talk of “quality control” and “smart towns with clear drains and safe roads and bridges”. The heavy rains instead turned 90 per cent of the state’s roads — 887 roads, 60,000 km in length — into free-flowing rivers loaded with muck and boulders, leaving behind broken stretches, breached bridges, choked drains and culverts and 23 people, mostly migrant labourers, dead in landslides and tree-felling incidents.

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It isn’t just the rural areas that were affected. The heavy rains rendered towns like Shimla, Solan, Nahan, Mandi, Kullu, Manali, Bilaspur Dharamsala, Baddi and Barotiwala waterlogged.

As the highways and link roads snapped, thousands of residents and tourists were left stranded in many parts of the state without water, electricity and connectivity for the next 24 hours. At some places, trucks loaded with apples and vegetables remained parked on roads; elsewhere, the stock remained in the orchards and fields for more than five days. Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur pegged the loss to roads, bridges and IPH schemes at Rs 500 crore, but assessment is still on and losses would go up.

The story replays every year, costing the fund-starved state dearly; loss of infrastructure ranging anywhere between Rs 500 crore and Rs 1,000 crore. This year’s large-scale damage has once again raised questions as to why Himachal has failed to build roads, bridges and water schemes that can stand extreme weather events and last decades.

No takers for blame

Experts blame it on poor design and lack of geological investigation, ignoring of hill road manual, use of poor quality material in aggregates, poor mapping of runoff and fragile mountainous terrain and haphazard vertical cutting. Add to it the use of blasting in construction of link roads and highways in the floodplains of rivers and their tributaries, inundation of hills due to deforestation, limited funds and the unholy nexus bewteen politicians, contractors and departments involved.

The truth is accountability is never fixed for the damage to roads and bridges. Experts say that even when these are plugged, it is done on ad hoc basis and never as per specifications.

Infrastructure issues

Dr Kaustav Sarkar, assistant professor at the School of Engineering, IIT-Mandi, has inspected many roads and bridges damaged in the region. He says the infrastructure has not been designed and built for plying of heavy traffic and trucks. “The runoff that comes down in high velocity, damaging roads and bridges and walls during the rains, has also not been taken into account,” he says. 

  As a result, the black top erodes and roads are turned into potholes as water, the main enemy of charcoal and concrete, seeps into subsurface level and triggers landslides.

Often blamed for poor quality, contractors in Himachal rue limited sources and lack of training. “We follow all specifications, but some structures can’t withstand unpredictable flash floods. Imagine, we have to build 1-km road in Rs 20 lakh. In an advanced country, the budget would be Rs 1 crore. They build road base with 1 metre thickness as against our 3 feet,” says PK Sood, who runs a construction company. He says it is wrong to blame the contractors. “There is a defect liability period of five years and the damage is to be plugged by us from our own pockets,” he says.

Experts beg to differ. They say there is no quality control. In many roads and bridges, reinforcement corrodes even in steel structure as the aggregate includes more clay content. That leaves the concrete porous due to seepage of water and the structure is damaged. The roads also interfere with natural drainage system. Add to that the side drains and culverts that are not laid down properly.

They cite recent examples. Take the Rs 2-crore Kullu bridge across Beas that collapsed on August 18, just months after it was built. The Baghi Pul in Mandi collapses every year in floods, but no one is ever blamed for it. Radat Nullah culvert on the Chopal-Dewat road in Shimla was raised on debris and got washed away on August 18.

Quality issues

Sarkar says cement and steel are standardised material, but problems arise when the aggregate is not prepared as per standards and rules are not adhered to when laying road and wall base. 

Although online bidding is adopted for big road projects, in many cases, these agencies award contracts for construction and tarring of roads and bridges to contractors and sub-contractors. “They often fail to deliver as per standards,” admits a retired PWD chief engineer.

BR Dhiman, Engineer-in-Chief, PWD design and quality control, agrees that there are some quality control issues in the execution of works due to time and fund constraints, but says remedial measures are taken “when these gaps are found”. Dhiman points out that in case of cloudbursts, no roads and bridges can absorb the impact. 

Soon, a new manual for hills

Indian Road Congress (IRC) has a separate hill road manual for the Himalayan states, but, its revision is on the cards as it has not been updated for the last 15 years. “We would be revising the hill road manual in six months and inducting latest road engineering techniques and technological innovations developed around the world,” says SK Nirmal, secretary general, IRC.

CM: Zero tolerance for corruption in road works

Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, who also holds the PWD portfolio, says the quality control cell has been inspecting big road projects in all districts. Third-party inspections are also being put in place. “We have adopted zero-tolerance policy towards corruption and are not going to make any compromise with the quality of infrastructure so that our roads and bridges last longer. We have blacklisted some contractors in Hamirpur and inquiries are on against five executive engineers,” he says.