Feeder roads in sorry plight

Thousands of feeder roads linking union parishads with upazila, district, divisional headquarters and the capital are now deplorably in a sorry plight. Greater attention to upgrading national highways might have led the authorities concerned to leave the feeder roads to the backyard. But then these roads, which serve as arteries of the national economy, have the potential to play a very crucial role in helping achieve higher growth needed for middle-income status of the country.       
Just visit all feeder roads by the side of the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway. All these will look like dark tunnels with bright highways at their mouths. One will surely get an impression that no road development work is really taking place in the country. Such an impression is not without any basis.
One such feeder road, connecting Gouripur and Kachua in Comilla district along the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway is in a shambles. An auto-rickshaw passenger will simply fall sick due to twists and turns caused by countless potholes on the damaged road. Then again the Gouripur-Matlab road has returned to what it had been when Minister of Road Transport and Bridges Obaidul Quader had once implored hundreds of curious villagers there to observe localised strikes as a mark of protest to press for repairing the road. Potholes have made the vital road unusable once again. He gave them the impression that he was nobody to look into the road!
What's about the feeder road from Nayergaon Bazar to Kurer Ghat in Matlab upazila of Chandpur district? A visitor will certainly say 'no' to another trip there in his life-time. The road reminds one of the medieval age. Rickshaws and other modes of transports are gradually vanishing from the road as both drivers and passengers are refusing to bear the pains of driving those due to worst road conditions.
At a time when all investors-domestic and foreign-quite rightly treat adequate and smooth road networks in the country as a precondition for investment, the hard realities obtaining on feeder roads will simply drive them away. Even cities and towns will remain overcrowded as office-goers and businessmen will never venture to go back home after office and business hours. Good feeder roads could help ease population pressure on cities and towns.
It is because of the crucial role rural roads play that the country's development partners have put  emphasis on their development. They treat infrastructure deficit as a major constraint to Bangladesh's faster economic growth. Years of underinvestment has resulted in poor access to basic infrastructure like feeder roads for a large part of Bangladesh's population, particularly the economically disadvantaged and those in rural areas. As the country experienced strong economic growth in recent years, historical underinvestment in infrastructure further pushed the demand for roads. It is clear that the country needs huge investment in this area.
Feeder road networks in the country need much better repair and maintenance as these are critical for promoting private investment and growth, as well as attaining faster poverty reduction. Such roads have the potential to expand the economy's productive capacity and provide people greater access to education and health services, water and sanitation, employment, credit, and markets. Better infrastructure also reduces vulnerability of the poor to economic shocks and natural disasters, enhances their well-being and encourages investments in human capital and more productive economic activities.
A BIDS survey has found improved roads also creating opportunities for economic growth and poverty reduction through a range of mechanisms. Roads reduce transportation costs and the costs of consumption and production of goods and services.  With easier access to markets and technology, improved roads expand farm and non-farm production through increased availability of relevant inputs and lower input costs as well as growth in rural enterprises.  At the household level, road development contributes to higher productivity and demand for labour and improved education and health, including for women and girls.
Road investment constitutes a major portfolio of public investment in rural areas, reinforcing the notion that rural income and productivity growth depend critically on roads. Finance Minister AMA Muhith in his 2015-16 budget speech highlighted such an importance. Without going for new roads, he allocated a sizeable amount for their repair and maintenance.
What is now urgently needed is close monitoring of repair and maintenance of feeder roads by an appropriate authority to see that such funds are not misused through use of sub-standard materials. Every member of parliament should be assigned to head local committees to oversee such repair and maintenance to plug all holes through which there is always drainage of public money. One expert of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) has suggested close and regular supervision of repair and maintenance of the feeder roads at regular intervals as its absence has already resulted in turning these as nightmares for millions of road-users.     
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