Estimating the Social Profitability of India's Rural Roads Program : A Bumpy Ride
India's rural roads program, Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, aims to draw villagers into the mainstream by improving not only their terms of trade, but also their educational attainments and health. Treating each all-weather feeder road as a...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/08/16603174/estimating-social-profitability-indias-rural-roads-program-bumpy-ride http://hdl.handle.net/10986/12008 |
| Summary: | India's rural roads program,
Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, aims to draw villagers
into the mainstream by improving not only their terms of
trade, but also their educational attainments and health.
Treating each all-weather feeder road as an isolated element
within the larger network, and using shadow prices to value
the main components of costs and benefits, the paper
demonstrates that further investments in the program are,
with high probability, socially profitable, especially in
poorer and more densely settled regions. Taking the entire
set of new individual roads together, qualitative arguments
suggest that their external and spill-over effects on the
system as a whole probably generate some net additional
benefits, but of very uncertain magnitude. |
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