Right of way
Also called: RoW · Topic: Infrastructure: Transport, Communications and Energy · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Right of way (RoW) is legal permission to use a strip of land or a public way that someone else owns, so that a road, pipeline, power line or cable can be built along it. The owner keeps the land. The infrastructure builder only gets the right to lay the asset, dig when it needs repair, and keep it running. Networks such as fibre, gas pipelines and transmission lines run through thousands of plots and roadsides, so each one needs many RoW permissions. Slow or costly RoW approval is a common reason projects get delayed, and fast approval speeds up rollout.
Example
Under the Amended BharatNet Program, one argument for the State-led model is that a state government knows its own roads, land and local offices. It can therefore grant RoW for laying optical fibre to gram panchayats faster than a central agency. Poor RoW coordination also has a cost: when a road is widened, fibre already laid along it often has to be dug up and moved. Fibre cuts like these are a major reason why panchayats lose their connection.
Don't confuse with
- Land acquisition: here the government takes over ownership of the land and pays compensation. Under RoW, ownership stays with the original owner, and only the right to lay and maintain the asset is given.
- Last-mile connectivity: this is the final leg of a network that reaches the end user. RoW is the legal permission that lets any part of a network, including the last mile, be laid at all.