All roads lead to Mysore

Transport it must be said, is rather hard in India. There are extensive mountain and hill ranges in Southern India, which make it naturally quite difficult to travel from one place to another. Road infrastructure here is limited and meager. When the monsoons come, those roads which do exist, are washed away, leaving the traveler cut off and unable to traverse the land. Commerce by sea brings the promise of being able to carry heavier goods - it is after all far easier to move things on the ocean - than by the great buffalo trains by the transport castes on land which carry goods there, but of course, this is only available in certain jurisdictions. The same can be said about rivers: moving goods on inland water ways is far cheaper, but rivers are only found in some places, and where they are found, they are not always suitable, being too quickly flowing and dangerous, seasonal, or with insufficient water flow. So what do you do when you have a continental empire?

This has been a severe issue which has been confronting the Mysorean government, which has been deeply concerned about actions upon its northern border with the Maratha. The Maratha are in the middle of conducting an armed invasion of the Mughal Empire, and while the fate of the Mughal Empire is no doubt of great indifference to the advisers of king, there have been serious issues which have been raised in the planning of defense against a Maratha attack on our northern borders, as well as what would happen in the case of whether it proves necessary to launch an armed invasion of the Maratha themselves. Troops would have trouble marching, gaining supplies, they would be slow, ineffective, etc. in these regions far from our capital and where logistics lines would be exceedingly difficult to us.

Furthermore it is clear that in the interests of gaining increased revenue for the King, that we need to improve infrastructure connections to improve internal commerce. There are increasing needs for the transport of food, raw materials, and artisan supplies around the nation, as well as for people. In fact, people are one of the biggest things, as improvements in communication require faster movements for messengers and couriers. While the northern routes are principally intended for military reasons to support military operations in a potential conflict between the Kingdom and the Maratha, other roads have greater priority to their commercial functions. Roads to Travancore in particular, passing through the passes of the Ghats, help to improve our trade and commercial position there. But of course they are also well capable of serving military purposes.

Hence, stemming from these requirements, it has been decided to undertake a program to improve road connections throughout the kingdom, financed by the King's treasury. Specifically, a road network of paved roads is envisioned to link together the royal capital at Mysore and all important cities, with specific focus provided for building a road linkage between Mysore and the coast, and between Mysore and the northern frontier. These paved roads are intended to be built to be in the valleys where rice is grown, elevated on berns to protect them from the flooding of the monsoons. They will be capable of accommodating heavy traffic, including cart, artillery, and elephants. Bridges will traverse rivers with arcs of stone where needed. Trees will be planted alongside their banks to provide for shade for the traveler, and rest stops will be established around the distance for the average traveler upon the road every day. These will of course only provide as far as aiding travelers for supporting couriers on their swift steeds, who will be provided with exchanges of horses at these sections to enable them to have fresh mounts to travel on faster with their messages, but it is expected that small settlements will probably arise here to provide for the needs of travelers. Such settlements will also doubtless provide for the needs of the small military companies which will be stationed there to provide for anti-bandit and public order operations, as well as to protect the royal granaries and military supply depots which will be used on these royal roads for supplying troop movements. The cost to keep up this road system, other than the waystations, will be borne by the provinces once they are constructed, but doubtless the increased tax revenue from travelers travelling on the roads and the associated tariffs will be of generated, provided by customs posts at strategic locations. Principally their repair and maintenance will be undertaken by peasants engaged in corvée labor.

This will be complemented by the improvement of some water traffic capacities to enable better movement of goods along the rivers. However, as previously mentioned Southern India is not nearly as well suited for this as Northern India, because Southern Indian is very mountainous and hilly. Furthermore most of the rivers drain to the east, not to to the West, which further undercuts such advantages. But it is still intended that some work will be undertaken here.

A project such as this one is very large, given the extensive amount of terrain that has to be covered, with many thousands of kilometers of good quality roads needed to be built, if not more. Thus it is intended that 250,000 Pagodas (the Mysorean currency) will be invested in it, for the period of 2 years.