Four-lane highway kindles dream of El Dorado for farmers

Palanpur, Gujarat, June 14 (UNI) For the local farmers here the barren waste land on main Silchar-Porbabdar via Abu Road of the Golden Quadrilateral project has proved a windfall after the conversion of the national highway into four lanes.

The local farmers who had to toil hard to grow bajri, castor, mustard and other less profitable crops that was hardly enough to make both ends meet now look happy as prices of their landholding is sky-rocketing.

According to speculators the land is 10 times dearer than what it was a decade back.

The builders and land speculators consider the boom as an encouraging sign. The prices of real estate might have fallen in the metros but that is hardly noticed here.

''The sudden boom in the prices of the roadside land is attributed to four-lane roads which has not only made the transportation smooth, safer, and speedy but also provided a new shine to the waste-land arousing a new hope and possibility of a prosperous market on the road side,'' says Kamlesh Shah who has invested heavily in the land.

The project director, National Highway Authority at Palanpur Lt Col Khushwant Singh, feels the prices of the land will go even higher once the roads are completed.

Explaining the details of East-West Golden corridor under ambitious national Golden Quadrilateral project, he said, ''Our project is one of the two ambitious national projects -- a North-South corridor that runs between Kashmir to Kanyakumari, a distance of 4076 km while ours is the East-West corridor, connecting Silchar in Asom, with Porbandar 3640 km in Gujarat via Siliguri, Mujafarpur, Gorakhpur, Lucknow, Jhansi, Shivpuri, Kota, Chitore, Udaipur, Pindwada, Abu road, Palanpur, Deesa, Radanpur, Samakhiyali, Garamore, Morbi, Rajkot, Jetpur, Upleta and Porbandar. The work on Palanpur-Deesa is complete. While four lane work from Deesa to Porbandar has been scheduled to be complete by November 2007.'' MORE UNI