Padh likh kar babuji chale naukri paane, haar kar sakhi driveri milli truck chalane ko — On the back of a truck with a Rajasthan number-plate.

The Golden Quadrilateral may have set off alarm bells elsewhere but in Rajasthan, a state ravaged by drought for the past five years, it sounds hope of jobs and a path to better life.

If two MPs went out of their way to get the GQ to pass through their constituencies here, people with homes falling in the path have voluntarily pulled them down with just a promissory letter from the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). There have been no disagreements, forget lawsuits over compensation.

Former Union minister of state for rural affairs Subhash Maharia explains why people want the roads so badly. ‘‘That is because Rajasthanis have never seen roads. The roads being made under the Golden Quadrilateral are more than what have been built in the state in the past 40 years.’’

Actually, it gets better. The money being spent for the GQ stretch in Rajasthan is close to Rs 2,600 crore, more than what has been spent in the state for roads since Independence.

With the state being bankrupt, the only money being used for developmental works is that sanctioned by Central schemes like the Central Road Fund, the Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojana, the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund and NABARD.

No wonder then that when the project started, directions went out from the Rajasthan chief secretary’s office to give complete cooperation to NHAI. The result was that electricity and telephone poles standing in the way of the road were shifted in record time, leaving a clear stretch for the contractors to begin work. Now NHAI looks set to complete almost entire four-laning by December 2003.

‘‘We have not had to use a single bulldozer or crane or take the help of police to remove structures,’’ says Harish Mathur, Project Director for Jaipur-Bhilwada.

As per the initial plan, from Ajmer, the GQ was to follow the NH8 through Beawar, Bhim and then on to Udaipur. In the new plan, it will go through two new districts on NH 76 — Bhilwara and Chittor — before it reaches Udaipur, adding 20 km to its length. Behind this change are Bhilwara MP V.P. Singh and Srichand Kriplani of Chittor, both belonging to the BJP.

From the time they first heard about the dream road in 1998, they started sending representations through local DMs and Rajasthani politicians at the Centre till they got the route changed.

Luckily for them, PWD reports also recommended the altered route. Singh claims the Bhim and Devigarh region, through which the GQ was first supposed to run, is ‘‘so pristine that it is best left untouched’’. He also argues that the old golden highway would have left out Chittor with all its cement industry.

There are five cement plants, including those belonging to giants like JK Cement and Birla Cement responsible for 50-per cent truck traffic in these parts, apart from the textile, marble, soapstone and asbestos industry here.

NHAI came into the picture only after the new routes were finalised. Ask him about the change and NHAI’s Mathur says: ‘‘The routes would have only been chosen if they were found to be technically and more economically feasible.’’

Incidentally, Ajmer MP Rasa Singh has no problem either with the new route, though it means his constituency gets barely a glimpse of the GQ. He believes the decision must have been taken ‘‘because the other area is less hilly and would require lesser effort to construct’’.

Maharia says nobody is complaining. Beawar already has a national highway and the new route means a new connectivity. ‘‘Now both the areas can come up,’’ he says.

People, of course, did not need any convincing. Turn towards Nasirabad, a town of around 50,000 people, a few kilometres off the GQ. It is on the national map as bodies for trailers used all over the country are made here.

Adjoining small town Srinagar is known for trailer repair. Almost every family in Nasirabad owns a trailer, either on its own or jointly with other families.

At Pravin Truck Body Repair, one runs into Sajjan Sharma, a BSc graduate, having a modest lunch of dry rotis and buttermilk. He talks of how his family would earlier spend at least six months a year cultivating something.

When the drought strikes, he says, pointing to the dry fields behind his workshop: ‘‘We have no option, the only jobs available are to do with trucks, either working as a helper or a repairman, or if lucky, as a driver.’’

Local Rajasthani women get employment on Jaipur-Kishangarh stretch. Renuka Puri

There are no doubts in Sharma’s mind about the GQ, not even the familiar one about whether he would get relief for making way for it. He knows the quality of roads will mean less breakdowns and perhaps lesser work for him. But Sharma is expecting the increased number of trucks on the road to nake up for it and last month, moved his shop back to make way for the GQ.

In Mahapura, a small village on the Jaipur-Kishangarh road, Anil Jaiswal has himself demolished half his shop. ‘‘Once NHAI made an assessment and gave me a consent note, I did this myself. The big highway will mean better business later,’’ he says. And even if it does not, he adds, he will have no regrets. ‘‘Isn’t it for national interest?’’

(Tomorrow: Flyover fancy grounds GQ in Pune-Satara)

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