No Man’s Roads - Curious case of Roads with no owners

If one has traveled in India through roads, he/she must have noticed this strange phenomenon of roads in completely dilapidated conditions at border of two states. Specifically, when the border crossing is through rural/village roads one won’t find any sort of roads in area between two consecutive Exit-Entries at state borders. I call those non-existent border roads in rural areas, “No Man’s Roads”.

Reason- both of the adjoining states consider these portions of roads as subject of ‘the other state’; so generous. But this generosity results in extinction of proper roads in that area. I personally have noticed this on Haryana-Rajasthan border at more than one place in Mahendragarh district. And have heard about such stretches on other Indian state borders as well. At all of those places one would find a rocky, barely charcoal, sandy stretch of so called roads (like below).

'HR-RAJ border 'No'road in Mahendragarh/Jhunjhunu districts

HR-RAJ border 'No'road in Mahendragarh/Jhunjhunu districts

It’s really frustrating seeing such 'so called' roads for years despite huge promises of rural upliftment again and again, as these missing veins are holding those promises from fulfilling. 

It is no secret that roads are first temptation for development in any region, so taking care of these missing links should be first priority en-route to development. This leads to the vital question, what can be done in this regard. Following ideas/approaches are few suggestions:

1. Mutual Cooperation- Easiest approach is collaboration between concerned stakeholders to fill the blank spaces in road network. But evidently, there is lack of cooperation between state level stakeholders causing the situation to arise in first place. To mitigate this, district/municipal level stakeholders must come into prominent role to and find ways to:
• Define Ownership- These orphan stretch of roads need to be owned first in order to restore them. The extent of ownership should be decided and agreed mutually between respective administrative councils of adjoining states, equal ownership being default share in case of no agreement.
2. Central Government as owner- Make these 'no'road stretches part of central schemes such as PMGSY and maintain them through that. And if these are already under one such scheme, then answers are needed as to why they are in such a condition. But even roads under PMGSY are in dilapidated situation. So how effective this approach could be, is arguable.
3. Special Purpose Entities (SPE) - If mutual cooperation is not feasible, another way is to establish a special purpose entity (say, Rural Border Roads Restoration Organization) for specifically taking care of these non-existent rural state border roads.
4. Panchayat level intervention- Various village panchayats along these roads are the prime stakeholders and their intervention could bring most effective solution. But considering the federal structure of our country, how effective can be the collaboration between village panchayats of two different states is worth exploring as well as debatable.

Finding solution is easy if intent is applied, but these ‘No Man’s roads’ do need to be owned now.

PS: Readers are welcome to share the pictures of such ’no’ roads at various state borders with location to include in the blog.