Road Rash

A few days ago, I was travelling from Bangalore to Mumbai. This was hardly my first trip to the South. I am on those roads often - sometimes for work, sometimes for the restless pleasure of the journey itself. Years of such travel have honed my instinct to notice the small details: the slope of a flyover, the placement of a milestone, the shifting patterns of truck convoys. The highway is a diary. It tells you a lot about a country, if you bother to read it.

Not long ago, the stretch from Katraj in Pune to Kolhapur was a joy. The tarmac rolled smoothly under the tyres, the trucks kept their dignified distance, and the scenery had the quiet grace that makes long-distance driving something of a meditation. You could hold a steady speed and steady thoughts.

Today, that same stretch is a catastrophe. From Katraj to somewhere near Hubballi, the road is torn apart. Not for the occasional repair, but in the throes of full-scale reconstruction. Diversions erupt every few hundred metres - a left here, sharp right there, through narrow cuts that would challenge even a rally driver. The untrained driver is not merely inconvenienced but he is positively in danger.

The problem is not just the detours or delays. It is the intent. India’s roads, it seems, are no longer built for people to travel on. They are built for contracts to be signed, for repairs to be perpetual, for profits to be skimmed. A smooth, safe, functional road is a finished project whereas an unfinished road becomes eternally a renewable source of income.

And they accidents occur with grim regularity, the official line is to blame the driver for speeding, fatigue or distraction. Rarely is there mention of sudden two-way stretches with no warning signs, of diversions that funnel vehicles head-on at night with blinding headlights, of curves sharper than they appear. It is a wonder more people do not die.

But many do. India records over 1.6 lakh road deaths each year. In a nation of 145 crore, that is barely a murmur in the news cycle. And yet, there is no outcry, no resignation and no systemic shame. Life is cheap, and the highway system reminds you of it with every jolt to your spine.

At night, the Katraj–Hubballi run turns into something close to a video game. Trucks loom suddenly from unlit corners, motorbikes dart without reflectors, diversions arrive with no reflective paint or hazard lamps. You drive not in confidence but in constant dread, as if survival is less a matter of skill and more a matter of luck.

Our highways have been proudly unfinished since independence. They are monuments not to engineering achievement but to bureaucratic inertia, political favour and contractual appetite. They are not arteries of commerce or threads stitching together a vast nation but inhuman obstacle courses laid out for the citizenry to endure.

So here is to our highways. Proudly unfinished since independence. Built not for travel, but for trials. Not for citizens, but for contracts.

Drive safe. Or better, do not drive at all.

(The writer is CMD of a private company. Views personal.)