Transportation Sector In Assam Essay

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Transportation sector in Assam – Meghalaya
Introduction
Transportation sector in Assam
Current status
Challenges
Opportunities
Potential paybacks Introduction
Transport and communication infrastructure is the backbone of economy to say the least. It has a direct linkage to every sector of economy – the primary sector, secondary sector and tertiary/service sector. An American economist Walt Whitman Rostow in his famous Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth recognises good transportation infrastructure to be a pre-requisite to take-off. Taking a cue from this, one can perhaps relate as to why the North-east India in general hasn’t been able to tap into the rapid economic growth despite having immense potential – the answer could be poor transportation infrastructure. …show more content…

So much so that almost three months in one financial year is rendered useless every year. Floods poses a series of challenges to the roadways in Assam. To start with, it is very difficult to construct roads during floods. Floods also damage existing road infrastructure to a large extent. For instance, roads in Assam have a large number of submersible stretches and also a large number of semi-permanent timber bridges. These structures frequently gets damaged during the floods and hamper all weather connectivity in the state.
The presence of numerous rivers in the floodplains necessitates construction of a large number of bridges. The rivers in Assam grow as big as ocean during monsoons and it makes it very difficult for roadways to operate. Many of the bridges are washed away while there are none at many stretches. Coupled to this is the huge pressure on the road network owing to the fact that Assam is the gateway to northeast. Also, of the total rural road network, only around fifty percent are black surfaced roads. Non surfaced roads are almost unusable when there is heavy rainfall.

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