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Roads
A
program of providing a net-work of roads has been chalked out and
when it is completed, there will not remain any village whether big
or small, which is not connected to a market place and which does
not find communication available for all the 12 months of the year.
This continuous road service is possible, because of the fact, that
all the roads are pucca metalled, and that not a single water
course, stream or river, is left unbridged. This stands in bold
contrast to the practice found in other parts of country where most
of the roads are fair-weather roads, having only dips instead of
culverts and having rivers without pucca arrangement for fording.
To-date there exists in Gondal State 300 miles of pucca metalled
roads. The total running length of bridges over 40 feet span
measures 5250 feet against 1,000 feet in 1884. There is a number of
culverts built for the sole purpose of improving cultivator’s
fields or preventing damage to them, or providing approach
facilities to their lands.
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Roadmap of
Gondal state
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Bridges
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This
for an area of 1024 sq. miles compares very favourably with other
parts of the country, and yet road construction still continues and
that too at a brisk pace.
The
geographical position of Gondal has necessitated the maintenance on
its part of the greatest length of trunk roads compared to its area.
Major Burke, the joint administrator, Bhavnagar State, remarked –
“ Gondal roads are the best district roads in the whole of
India,” and Mr. Watson, the Agent to the Governor-General,
wrote-“…….our appreciation of the condition of the roads in
Your Highness’ State grew each mile that we approached Rajkot,”
amd Mrs. Kealy, the Agent to the Governor-General, wrote-“…I had
heard so much before-hand about the high standard of the roads and
schools, that I was almost prepared to be disappointed. But I was
far from that and I should like once more, if I may, to congratulate
Your Highness on them. The roads may be fitly described as a
motorist dream, and I only wish we could exchange some of them for
the dreadful ones in and near Rajkot.”
The
network of roads together with conveniently located railway lines
completes the transportation system, while the telephone wires of
which there are 300 miles make the system of communications fully
efficient.
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