Impressive expressways Are we really on the road to development?

5 November 2013 06:30 pm Views - 1816

We now have another highway, and a much-needed one, leading to the Katunayake International Airport. It is a symbol of the country’s ambitious development plans. Unfortunately, the symbolism isn’t as laudable as planners would like to believe.
The media reported that a three-day hiatus, or ‘grace period,’ would be offered to the public before the highway’s official opening on Sunday Oct. 27, during which pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles and any other form of transport not normally allowed on the highway would have a ‘free for all’ (other forms of transport were not specified).

There was a great deal of confusion regarding the time span of this ‘grace period.’ Finally, I was told that it would start on Thursday and end on Saturday. Therefore, I went with a friend on Thursday to see if this was true.
We tried both entry points. My friend tried the one at Peliyagoda, just across the New Kelani Bridge. I tried at the entry point passing the Kelaniya Campus and the Thorana Handiya (junction) along the Colombo-Kandy road. There were two burly young policemen leaning against a railing blocking the road; pedestrians, yes, no bicycles or anything else.

When I told them that the media had reported otherwise, one of the policemen muttered: “Media karayanta amu kevila” (“these media fellows are nuts.”)
It was typical Sri Lankan confusion, with the exact opposite of what was reported, happening. But there is no confusion at all regarding the aims of those who built the highway. Fast-forward at whatever cost and too bad for those who can’t keep up.

This is Sri Lanka’s second expressway, and neither has a slow lane (slow lanes are not for bicycles, but motorcycles and slower vehicles can use them). The message is clear. There is no time or money for courtesies and lame ducks. The radio said on Monday morning that the first private vehicle to enter the CKE officially was a BMW driven by an engineer.

If this is true (unless it’s another case of media nuttiness), the symbolism is very stark. Engineering is a symbol of development, a high political priority. If the first user had been a university lecturer in humanities driving a Maruti, that would have been anti-climactic in this supercharged context. By accident or design, the right man came driving the right vehicle to fill the right slot.

Some people ask me to be more positive about development. I was travelling with a friend past the new Kelani Bridge towards Peliyagoda at night. He’s a critic of this government, but I could see that he was impressed by the passing scenery – the elevated ground level which led to the new expressway and the neon lights and signals reflecting on the shiny surfaces of new vehicles speeding past. It’s a seductive light and sound show, really very pretty. His whole attitude seemed to say, give credit where it’s due.

I have no problem regarding the new expressway. There is a serious need for it - has been so for the past several decades. In fact, we still have only 120km of such expressways for the whole country, whereas we need several times that number given the volume of vehicular traffic.
But I have a problem when I try to place the new highway in context. The context is the entire country, its productivity, the rich-poor gap, and the mistaken assumption (or the myth, carefully nurtured by politicians) that development is mainly a question of building and repairing roads.

Development is a lot more than that. A beautifully lit road at night with a spotless carpet is only a more visible aspect of it. But the statistics of malnourishment, education, health, human rights, care of the aged, and the production capacity of the country’s industries are an invisible component, quite able to erode into the visible splendour of road development in the long run.

"The statistics of malnourishment, education, health, human rights, care of the aged, and the production capacity of the country’s industries are an invisible component, quite able to erode into the visible splendour of road development in the long run"

The news is bad from all these sectors. But, if we look at the industries alone for the sake of this argument, think of how many new factories have been built since this post-2006 development drive began. When we enter a stationary store, a tire dealer’s shop, a computer software or hardware business, an optician’s, a bicycle dealer, or an electronic goods store, how many products made in Sri Lanka can we find? The much-discussed (discussed for the wrong reasons, to be sure) new factory at Rathupaswala is producing disposable rubber gloves, not semiconductors. We don’t have a single factory making semiconductors. This is the kind of trash we get as development.

Much of the rubber burned by speeding vehicles on the new highways happens to be imported. The fuel burned by these vehicles has been refined abroad. And yet, we continue to be impressed by development. In this context, our new expressways are really a stark symbol of the lack of humanity which characterises our planning and governing.

All those easily impressed by the psychedelics of new roads forget that this development has come decades too late. Twenty km of new highway out of Colombo still leaves us with 200 km or more traffic-clogged roads in the suburbs. Sensible planners would have built a turnpike system over Colombo and other vital cities instead of investing in a new airport and harbour, and improving public transport (both road and rail) island-wide. Instead, we have a ‘drive-in’ movie that only serves to expose glaring deficiencies in the system.