Green Roads To Clean Villages: Rural Ministry Constructs Over 20,000 km Using Environment-Friendly Technologies

The Ministry for Rural Development has built over 20,000 km of roads adopting environment-friendly measures in the past four years as part of government’s rural road development scheme, reports Hindustan Times.

The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) is a nationwide plan to provide all-weather road connectivity to unconnected and under-connected villages. Official statistics says that 5,62,047 km of new and improved rural road network has been created.

“For the last few years, our focus to using green and environment-friendly technologies has been yielding better results. We have completed 20,733 Km of roads using green methods, ”Rural Development Secretary Amarjeet Sinha was quoted saying.

Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had lauded the Rural Development Ministry's performance.

Gadkari who is also a staunch advocate of adopting environment-friendly measures in constructing roads had advised road developers of Maharashtra to use a mixture of 30 per cent glass, rubber and plastic waste in road construction.

The Rural Development Ministry had made use of shredded plastic remains in building greener roads. Waste plastic has been used in building 9,600 km of the road followed by cold mix, a bitumen-based formula, (6041 kms).

“Some of the most used techniques to [build green roads] are cold mix technology, waste plastic technology, fly ash, steel slag, coir and jute geotextile, a cell filled concrete and panel concrete,” said Alka Upadhyay, the Rural Ministry Official who leads the PMSGY.