May 29, 2003:  India en route for grand highways  
 
Smooth, pristine roads; traffic flowing at over 100km/h; emergency medical teams on standby for accidents. It is not an image many would associate with the Indian road network. But India is changing at last.

The country is witnessing one of the world's largest road building projects, worth more than $12bn. With roads up to six lanes wide covering nearly 14,000 kilometres (8,750 miles), Indian officials say the country is finally gearing up to take on its Asian economic rival, China. In October 1998 Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee promised the people of India world-class roads connecting the whole country.

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"As the city progresses there will be more factories. People will get more facilities - more employment," said Shravan Singh, a resident of of Dehmai village in Rajsthan's Behror district. But the new technology is also proving so tempting to some that they cannot keep their hands off it. So much so, in fact, that the authorities are having to think up ways to stop the electronic gadgets from being vandalised or stolen.

Read the report at BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3043235.stm