Seems that the government in Delhi is thinking about applying tolls to 'two lane highways'. This a euphemism for tracks built in the distant past and repaired infreqently. The highway between Rourki in Uttarakhand and Delhi is a prime example. It is an extemely busy road which passes big cities such as Muzzafarnagar and Meerut in UP and leads to Dehradun and Mussoorie on the one hand and to Haridwar, Rishikesh on the other. It is, therefore, used by tourists going to the hills and by millions of pilgrims going to Haridwar and then on to Kedarnath and Badrinath, all extremely important sites for Hindu pilgrims. This highway is a single carriageway with frequent villages encroaching from both sides of the road, bullock carts, tractors, even chidren defaecating on the road. There are frequent indiscriminate speed breakers in the form of humps so high that cars scrape their undersides. After the monsoon rains massive potholes appear and in parts the entire surface disappears. To charge toll for such a filthy road is an act of monstrous banditry. With economic growth millions of Indians are buying cars, motorbikes and mopeds and paying trillions of rupees in road tax. The m0ney disappears into a black hole without any accounting of where it has gone. Since this government was formed with a coalition of some twenty ragtag parties new ministries were created to bribe poltical partners. These pseudo ministers demand government bungalows, armed guards and kleptocrats to loot the exchequer. There is an insatiable demand for more tax collection to pay for these parasites and so taxes keep going up. I will not be surprised if there is a secret committee whose sole work is to dream up new taxes or increase those in existence. We can easily get rid of 75% of the kleptocrats and pay triple salaries to the ones that remain which will increase efficiency and decrease bribery. To think that out freeloading journalists keep advertising that the Prime Minister is a noted economist.