periodical issue
IRTDA News Letter.
Edited and Published by E. A. Nadirshah, O.B.E., J.P., for Indian Roads and Transport Development Association, Limited, at 27, Bastion Road, Bombay, and Printed by J. Middleton for C. Claridge & Co. Ltd., at the Claridge Works, Free Road, Bombay, 1. · Bombay · 1964
16 pages
Summary
The 16 April 1964 issue of the IRTDA News Letter presents road transport as an essential condition of India’s economic development and argues that government planning, taxation, railway influence, and administrative restrictions are holding the sector back. Its principal feature is an extended extract from M. R. Masani’s Lok Sabha speech, followed by replies and further discussion involving Transport Minister Raj Bahadur. The issue also reproduces an address by Madras Chief Minister M. Bhaktavatsalam on the practical difficulties of expanding roads, bridges, vehicles, and transport services across a rapidly developing country.
The editorial material is strongly interventionist in its advocacy of greater road investment and a more assertive road-transport policy. Masani contrasts road requirements with the allocations in the Second and Third Five-Year Plans, criticises vehicle-production shortfalls, high motor-vehicle taxation, permit restrictions, and what he sees as railway domination of transport policy. Bhaktavatsalam offers a more administrative and conciliatory perspective, emphasising limited resources, coordination between the Centre and the States, road safety, maintenance, and the continuing complementary role of railways. Commercial advertisements for trucks, diesel engines, bitumen, lubricants, wheels, and engine components occupy several pages.
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