This is a very interesting thread. People have commented about the impractical claims made about the 6 hour -1000KM commute possibility.
I have one point here: The minister is talking about the quality of the road, and not the capability of vehicles that will be plying on it. He might be talking about creating corridors where intrusions would be minimal and hence a high speed, uninterrupted drive would become a reality. In fact, the figure might have been the result of a mathematically challenged officer in the government. That does not mean that the vision is flawed.
The expressways that have been created were also the result of a very ambitious vision that is still being realized after 15 years.
In India, unless you aim at the sky, people don't believe you. So many decades of State apathy has made us sceptical about identifying possibilities
Another point that I want to make is about the importance of roads in facilitating commerce, entrepreneurship in rural areas. There are researchers working on assessing the impact of roads on industrialization. Here is a
study by world bank which states, among other conclusions, that the GQ project(s) have helped the movement of industries from urban to rural areas.
The point about increase in the concentration of cars is very valid. However, the market is still at a fraction of its potential. I say this because I am staying in a village right now and I can see the day in the next 5 years when many citizens who currently own a bike and use it for the daily commute would want to get a car. What I have realized is that most villages that are around a major city are witnessing a rise in prosperity (at least in pockets) at a fairly good pace. In the last 20 months that I have spent here, I have seen 3 new dealerships opening up- one for motorcycles (Hero), one for commercial vehicles (tractors+LCVs by Mahindra) and the third for passenger cars (Maruti). If this is the scene in one of the poorer states, one can imagine that the market forecast for the rest of the country would not be too different.
Having said that, I really doubt if there is any government department which is seriously monitoring the automobile sales in different categories to understand where our Oil imports would stand 10-15 years from today. Importing huge amounts of crude oil for keeping India on wheels is not a very smart thing to do. Electric cars, specifically LCVs like the Ace and Maximo, are going to help because most small scale industries in rural areas use them to transport their products. But that will give rise to electricity problems- already people face power cuts in summer.
I think the government is trying to clean the mess in steps. Roads will be the first step, then they would focus on increasing electric vehicles or making things like Bio Diesel commercially available . While they're at this, electricity generation and distribution would improve as well.
Like someone has mentioned in an earlier post, '' Acche Din '' aane mein time lagega