Research on rural roads by NIT Warangal

Warangal KCN):

NIT Warangal is the State Technical Agency (STA) and Principal Technical Agency (PTA) from the inception of the PMGSY program. As STA and PTA NIT Warangal will scrutinize the Detailed Project Reports of Rural Roads submitted by the panchayat raj department of respective states. The geotextile DPRs are scrutinized, designed and the working engineers are encouraged in the field to execute this Technology and inculcating the confidence in them to adopt such cost-effective technologies on rural roads.
National Institute of Technology Warangal granted a research project to monitor the performance of roads constructed with geotextiles/ geosynthetics in the state of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The Cost of the project is 15.0 lakhs and the funding agency is National Rural Infrastructure Development Agency, Ministry of Rural Development. The investigators of the project are Prof. S. Shankar, Prof. Venkaiah Chowdary, Prof. Vishnu R and Prof. CSRK Prasad. As part of this project about 10 roads constructed with geotextile and geosynthetics materials were selected. These roads are evaluated for pre-monsoon and post monsoon. Based on the data collected and field observation, it is noticed that the roads constructed with geotextiles or geosyntheics in the black cotton soil areas with shoulder width of 1.0m to 1.5 m and as separation and reinforcement functions are performing well even after 4 monsoon seasons. More data collection is in progress to document the performance of the same.
Background:
The Government of India, as a part of the poverty reduction strategy, launched the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY-I) on 25th December 2000 as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme to assist the states for construction of rural roads. The primary objective of the PMGSY was to provide all-weather road connectivity to the eligible unconnected habitations in the rural India. PMGSY-II was launched in 2013, with a target to upgrade 50,000 km of the existing rural roads. The average cost of the rural road is increasing day by day and the reason for this is the usage of materials and hauling distance from the far. On the other hand, lot of locally available materials and new technologies is the need of the hour to use in rural roads. During the last three years i.e., 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22, the road length completed using new materials/technologies is 8870, 11235 and 16038 km respectively, which shows an upward trend in the use of these materials/technologies. NITI Ayog has also recommended use of more new/green technology in PMGSY roads.