Gender and Socially-inclusive Rural Transport: Issues and Initiatives

JEFF TURNER Consultant Gender and Social Inclusive Transport Workshop

24-25 May 2012 ADB HQ Manila

The views expressed in this paper are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), or its Board of Governors, or the governments they represent. ADB does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this paper and accepts no responsibility for any consequence of their use. The countries listed in this paper do not imply any view on ADB's part as to sovereignty or independent status or necessarily conform to ADB's terminology.

What do we know about rural access and poverty?

The Rural Access Index measures the percentage of rural communities within 2km of an all-weather road. Some values for Asian countries include:
Bangladesh India Lao Tajikistan Sri Lanka China 37% (2000) 61% (2001) 64% (2002) 74% (2003) 92% (2003) 97% (2003)

How can we make rural infrastructure respond to the needs of the different social groups?
There are tools to help deliver the needs of rural populations

Integrated Rural Accessibility Planning a participatory process to understand community access needs.
Important for prioritizing rural infrastructure investments

Roads are not enough...!

However, rural transport infrastructure also needs to be accompanied by rural transport services

Research found that:

The construction of PMGSY (Indian national rural roads program) roads has no doubt improved accessibility to medical facilities..As long as a regular, frequent and round the clock public transport facility does not reach to these newly connected people the improved accessibility to medical facilities would not have much positive impact on the villagers health.

Rural Transport Services

Rural areas are served by a wide variety of transport means. Rural Transport services operate with low demand leading to limited revenues and poorly-maintained vehicles. Research has shown that subsidies are declining and there is a need for flexible approach to supporting both formal and informal transport

How can we make rural infrastructure more participatory?

Widespread practice of labourbased rural road construction and maintenance
Growing acceptance of inputting quotas for women labour into road contracts Issues of monitoring and enforcement of this approach.

Community contracting may be approach to increase ownership and maintenance.