North-South and East-West corridors

Also called: NS-EW Corridors · Topic: Transport and Communication in India · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 7 "Lifelines of National Economy"; Class 12, Ch 7 "Transport and Communication"

Meaning

The North-South (NS) and East-West (EW) corridors are two long highway routes built under NHDP Phase II. They cross each other at Jhansi:

• The NS corridor runs from Srinagar to Kanniyakumari. It is 4,076 km long, including the Kochi–Salem spur.
• The EW corridor runs from Silchar (Assam) to Porbandar (Gujarat). It is 3,640 km long.

These corridors matter because the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) only joins the four big metros. The NS and EW corridors cut across the middle of the country and reach its far ends: the Kashmir Valley, the southern tip, the North-East and the Saurashtra coast. Together with the GQ, they are the backbone of India's National Highway network.

Explanation

How the corridors came about

• The problem: India's busiest National Highways were narrow and crowded. Travel was slow, and moving goods between cities and ports cost a lot.
• The response: NHDP (National Highways Development Project) started in 1998-99. Its job was to widen the main highways to 4 or 6 lanes. It was done in phases (stages of work, one after another).
• Phase I was the Golden Quadrilateral, the 5,846 km ring of Delhi–Mumbai–Chennai–Kolkata.

• Phase II was the NS and EW corridors. They cross the inside of the GQ ring.

• Executing agency: NHAI (National Highways Authority of India), the central body that builds and maintains National Highways.

• The result: faster, cheaper road links that stretch to the far corners of the country, not only between the metros.

Parts of the network

• Corridor: a long, high-capacity route that carries traffic across a large region.

Corridor	From → To	Length	End points
North-South	Srinagar (J&K) → Kanniyakumari (Tamil Nadu)	4,076 km (with the Kochi–Salem spur)	North end in the Kashmir Valley. South end at the tip of mainland India (about 8°N)
East-West	Silchar (Barak Valley, Assam) → Porbandar (Saurashtra coast, Gujarat)	3,640 km	East end in the North-East. West end on the Arabian Sea

• Spur: a short branch road off a main corridor.
• The Kochi–Salem spur joins the Kerala port of Kochi to the NS corridor at Salem (Tamil Nadu).

• This gives a west-coast port a direct link to the national north–south route.

• Crossing point: Jhansi

• Jhansi is in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, at about 25.4°N, 78.6°E.
• It lies near the geographical centre of India, so a north–south line and an east–west line naturally meet there.

Why corridors create nodes

• Node: a point on a network where two or more routes meet. Goods and people change routes there.
• How a node grows:
• A corridor, or a corridor plus a GQ arm, passes through a city.
• Traffic from many directions has to pass through it.

• Warehouses, truck terminals, markets and industries come up there. The city grows into a transport and trade hub.

• Key exam point: a node comes from its network position (where routes meet), not just from the size of the city.

What came after (the 2017 change)

• In 2017, NHDP was subsumed into (merged into) Bharatmala Pariyojana. About 10,000 km of NHDP work was still unfinished (residual NHDP). It was added to Bharatmala Phase I [3].
• Bharatmala includes a component called National corridor efficiency improvement (~5,000 km). It removes choke points (spots where traffic gets stuck) on the GQ and the NS-EW corridors [3]. It does this with:
• ring roads (roads that circle a city)
• bypasses (roads that go around a town)
• elevated corridors (roads on pillars above crowded areas)

Where it occurs

• Scheme: NHDP Phase II. It was carried out by NHAI. NHDP began in 1998-99 and was merged into Bharatmala Pariyojana (Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, MoRTH) in 2017 [3].
• NS corridor: runs from Srinagar in the Kashmir Valley, across north and central India, to Kanniyakumari in Tamil Nadu. The Kochi (Kerala)–Salem (Tamil Nadu) spur branches off it.
• EW corridor: runs from Silchar in Assam's Barak Valley, across the North-East and the Ganga plain, to Porbandar on Gujarat's Saurashtra coast.
• Crossing: Jhansi (Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh).
• Nodes named in NCERT:
• Delhi: a GQ corner and on the NS corridor.
• Kanpur: on the GQ's Delhi–Kolkata arm and on the EW corridor.
• Bengaluru: on the GQ's Chennai–Mumbai arm and on the NS corridor.
• Hyderabad: on the NS corridor and linked to GQ cities.
• Patna: where the EW corridor and the GQ's eastern routes pass through the Ganga plain of Bihar.

Don't confuse with

• Golden Quadrilateral: this was NHDP Phase I, a 5,846 km ring joining Delhi–Mumbai–Chennai–Kolkata. The NS-EW corridors were Phase II, two straight lines across the country that meet at Jhansi.
• Nagpur as the crossing point: Nagpur is often wrongly given as the place where NS and EW meet. The correct answer is Jhansi (Uttar Pradesh).
• Bharatmala economic corridors: these are new routes (~9,000 km in Phase I) planned around freight flow between production and market centres [3]. The NS-EW corridors were older NHDP routes, made by widening existing highways.
• Delhi-Mumbai Expressway: this is a greenfield, access-controlled expressway (built on fresh land, with entry and exit only at fixed points), about 1,386 km long [4][5]. The NS-EW corridors are widened National Highways, not greenfield expressways.

Prelims Hooks

• NS corridor: Srinagar → Kanniyakumari, 4,076 km, including the Kochi–Salem spur.
• EW corridor: Silchar (Assam) → Porbandar (Gujarat), 3,640 km.
• Crossing point: Jhansi (Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh). Trap: not Nagpur.
• Phase order: GQ = NHDP Phase I. NS-EW = NHDP Phase II. Both were carried out by NHAI.
• Spur match: Kochi (Kerala) joins the NS corridor at Salem (Tamil Nadu).
• NHDP was subsumed into Bharatmala in 2017. About 10,000 km of residual NHDP went into Bharatmala Phase I [3].

Mains Points

• Regional development (GS-I):
• Corridor crossings and junctions such as Jhansi, Kanpur, Bengaluru and Delhi grow into nodes with warehouses and industries.
• Remote ends like Silchar (North-East) and Porbandar (Saurashtra) gain access to national markets.

• Without feeder roads, though, the benefits stay along the corridor and do not spread to inland areas.

• From roads to corridors (GS-III, infrastructure):

• NHDP widened single highways (GQ, NS-EW). Bharatmala plans roads by freight flow instead.
• Bharatmala adds feeder roads, port and border links, and ~5,000 km of efficiency work (ring roads, bypasses, elevated corridors) to clear choke points on the GQ and NS-EW [3].

• This targets India's high logistics cost (the cost of moving and storing goods). It also adds the "last mile" (the final short link to factories, ports and towns) that the old corridors lacked.

• Implementation gaps (GS-III):

• NHDP did not finish its work. About 10,000 km was carried into Bharatmala in 2017 [3].
• Bharatmala Phase I itself had built only 19,826 km of its 34,800 km by February 2025 [2].
• Common reasons:
  • delays in land acquisition
  • forest and environment clearances
  • rising costs

Related concepts

• National Highways Development Project
• Golden Quadrilateral
• Bharatmala Pariyojana
• Delhi-Mumbai Expressway
• Atal Setu

Read more

• Highway development programmes: from the Golden Quadrilateral to Bharatmala