Rural roads
Topic: Transport and Communication in India · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 7 "Transport and Communication"
Meaning
Rural roads link villages to each other and to nearby towns. They make up about 80% of India's road length. There are fewer of them in hilly, plateau and forested areas, because building there is hard and few people live there. Their quality also gets worse the farther they are from towns. They matter because they let farm goods reach markets and let villagers reach schools and hospitals.
Example
The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (started in December 2000) builds all-weather roads to unconnected villages and hamlets. It covers places with 500 or more people in the plains, and 250 or more in hill, tribal and desert areas.
Don't confuse with
- District roads: these link a district headquarters to other places in the district. Rural roads link the villages themselves.
Related concepts
- Grand Trunk Road
- Nagpur Plan
- Road network of India
- National Highways
- National Highways Authority of India
- State Highways
- Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana