Highways to Progress or Dead Ends?

Despite ambitious plans and soaring budgets, India’s road infrastructure still faces hurdles of safety, sustainability and sluggish execution.

John F. Kennedy once remarked, “America’s roads are not good because America is rich. America is rich because of its good roads.” The sentiment rings true for India, a nation that has bet heavily on highways as the backbone of its economic future.

India boasts the second-largest road network in the world, spanning 63.45 lakh kilometers. Yet, despite constituting just two percent of this vast web, National Highways (NH) bear the brunt of the load, carrying a staggering 33 percent of the country’s road traffic. Over the past decade, the NH network has grown from 91,287 km in 2014 to 1,46,195 km in 2024. With a road density of 1.94 km per square km, India now surpasses economic giants like the United States, Russia, and China in connectivity.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways oversees this network, except in the rugged, strategic borderlands managed by the Border Roads Organisation under the Defence Ministry. The numbers alone indicate an impressive commitment: in the fiscal year 2025-26, the ministry’s budget allocation stands at Rs. 2.87 trillion, a modest increase from Rs. 2.8 trillion (revised) in FY 2024-25 and Rs. 2.75 trillion in FY 2023-24. More striking, however, is the efficiency of fund utilization. Since 2015-16, the ministry has met 90 percent of its ambitious targets for NH development.

A significant portion of this expansion is driven by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), an autonomous body tasked with executing high-impact projects. Currently, its primary focus is the Bharatmala Project, a massive initiative launched in 2017 with the aim of extending the NH network by 34,800 km by 2022. Yet, as of December 2024, only 18,714 km had been completed, underscoring the gap between aspiration and execution.

Beyond NHAI, Rs. 1.2 trillion has been earmarked for expressways, multi-laning projects, and connectivity enhancements in left-wing extremism-affected areas. Expressway development is particularly ambitious. Meanwhile, multi-laning initiatives have kept pace, averaging 12,000 km annually, while 96 percent of the planned 6,014 km of roads in conflict-ridden regions have been completed.

Funding for these projects is drawn from four non-lapsable reserves: the Central Road and Infrastructure Fund (CRIF), the Permanent Bridges Fee Fund (PBFF), the Monetisation of National Highways Fund (NHMF), and the National Investment Fund (NIF). For FY 2025-26, these pools collectively amount to Rs. 74,000 crores. The CRIF, sustained by a fuel cess, finances state-level projects; the PBFF, fed by toll revenues, supports bridge maintenance; the NIF, derived from disinvestment, channels resources into the northeastern states; and the NHMF, sourced from monetized highway projects, serves as a crucial mechanism for repaying NHAI’s Rs. 3.35 trillion debt, most of it linked to Bharatmala. Under the National Monetisation Pipeline launched in 2021-22, the ministry aimed to raise Rs. 1.6 trillion by 2024-25, with Rs. 1.1 trillion already secured by 2023-24.

Despite robust investments, road maintenance remains a glaring challenge. In 2018, Niti Aayog recommended allocating at least 10 percent of infrastructure budgets for upkeep, yet the ministry continues to set aside a mere 2 percent. A parliamentary Standing Committee has deemed this allocation grossly insufficient, reflecting public frustration over deteriorating roads while officials scramble for sustainable maintenance solutions.

Road safety presents an equally pressing concern. Although road accidents declined from 4.90 lakh in 2014 to 4.61 lakh in 2024, fatalities have paradoxically risen, from 28 percent to 37 percent. The reasons range from lax traffic discipline to insufficient enforcement. Alarmingly, despite its gravity, road safety receives less than one percent of the total budget, with funds often going underutilized.

India’s highways pose an environmental challenge, with road transport handling 77 percent of logistics and diesel-powered freight contributing 12 percent of carbon emissions. Despite potential savings - 50 percent in fuel costs and 20 percent in logistics - EV adoption remains slow, requiring policy shifts, incentives, and infrastructure support for real progress.

At its core, India's road revolution is a testament to economic ambition. The expanding highway network has catalysed industrial growth, facilitated trade, and brought once-remote regions into the mainstream. Yet, to unlock its full potential, the country must address critical bottlenecks: regulatory complexities must be streamlined, road safety must take priority, and environmental concerns must be meaningfully integrated into infrastructure planning. Perhaps most crucially, the integration of highways with high-speed rail and freight corridors could create a seamless, multimodal transport network - one that truly supports India’s aspirations for the future.

(The author is a Chartered Accountant with a leading company in Mumbai. Views personal.)