Road network of India

Topic: Transport and Communication in India · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 7 "Transport and Communication"

Meaning

India's road network is the full system of roads in the country: National Highways, State Highways, district roads, rural roads, urban roads and project roads. Together they form the second largest road network in the world, about 63.45 lakh km in 2024 [2] (NCERT gives 62.16 lakh km for 2020-21).

Roads are the cheapest way to move small loads over short distances. They also act as feeders that link villages and towns to railways, ports and airports. This makes them the base of rural growth, trade and defence movement.

Explanation

How the network grew

• Grand Trunk (GT) Road: Sher Shah Suri, a 16th-century ruler, built it and called it the Shahi (royal) road.
• He built it to hold his empire together. It joined the Indus valley to the Sonar valley in Bengal.

• The British renamed it the Grand Trunk Road and ran it from Calcutta to Peshawar.

• Little road building before World War II: modern roads were built mostly around towns, cantonments (army stations) and ports to serve British trade and the army. Villages had only kutcha (earth) tracks.

• Nagpur Plan (1943): this was the first road plan for the whole country. It made four classes: national highways, state highways, district roads and village roads.

• Why it failed: British provinces and princely states (areas ruled by Indian kings under British control) did not work together.

• Twenty-Year Road Plan (1961): this was the next national plan after Independence.

• Big projects: NHAI became operational in 1995. The Golden Quadrilateral started in 1999. PMGSY began in 2000. Bharatmala Phase I was approved in 2017 [2]. PM Gati Shakti came in 2021.

Classes of roads and their share

Road length by class in 2019-20, from MoRTH data [2]:

Road class	Length (km)	Share	Built and kept up by
Rural Roads	45,22,228	71%	Local bodies; PMGSY for new links
District Roads	6,12,778	10%	Zila Parishad (district council)
Urban Roads	5,41,554	9%	Towns and cities
Project Roads	3,43,163	5%	Project agencies
State Highways	1,79,535	3%	State Public Works Departments
National Highways	1,32,499	2%	Central Government, through NHAI
Total	63,31,757	100%

• National Highways (NH): these are the main trunk roads. They carry traffic between states, and they carry troops and supplies for defence.
• NH length grew from 19,700 km in 1951 to 1,46,195 km in 2024 [2].

• NHs are only about 2% of road length, but they carried nearly 33% of road traffic in 2019-20 [2] (NCERT says 40%).

• State Highways: they link the state capital to district headquarters and join the NHs.

• District Roads: they link district headquarters to tehsil towns and markets.
• Rural Roads: they link villages to each other and to towns. NCERT puts them at about 80% of road length. MoRTH shows 71% because it counts urban and project roads separately [2].
• Class 10 adds two more classes: Golden Quadrilateral Super Highways and Border Roads, which makes six classes in all.
• Traffic is growing fast (2008-09 to 2019-20) [2]:
• Passenger traffic rose from 1,022 to 2,927 billion passenger-km. That is a 10% CAGR (compound annual growth rate, the average growth per year).
• Goods traffic rose from 6,182 to 25,199 billion tonne-km, a 14% CAGR.

Why roads suit short trips

• Lower cost: a road costs much less to build than a railway line.
• Rough land: roads can climb dissected (cut-up) land and steep slopes, as in the Himalaya, where railways are hard to build.
• Small loads: roads are cheap for a few people or a small amount of goods over short distances.
• Door-to-door service: goods go straight from the farm or factory to the buyer, so loading and unloading cost less.
• Surface type decides all-year use:
• Metalled (pucca) roads are made of cement, concrete or bitumen (coal tar). They work in all weather.
• Unmetalled (kutcha) roads are made of earth or gravel. They become unusable in the rainy season.

What decides where roads are built

• Road density means the km of road per 100 sq km of area. It is very uneven across India.
• Rugged land and few people → few roads:
• Hilly, plateau and forest areas cost more to build in.

• Fewer people live there, so rural road density is low.

• Distance from towns → poorer roads:

• Roads are crowded around urban centres.
• Further from towns there is less money and less upkeep, so road quality falls.

Where it occurs

• GT Road today: inside India it runs from Amritsar (Punjab) to Kolkata (West Bengal) across the Indo-Gangetic plain, through Delhi. It is mostly carried by NH-44 on the Amritsar–Delhi side and NH-19 on the Delhi/Agra–Kolkata side.
• Golden Quadrilateral: a 4-to-6-lane highway joining Delhi–Kolkata–Chennai–Mumbai–Delhi. It began in 1999 under the National Highways Development Project (NHDP).
• North–South Corridor: Srinagar (J&K) to Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu).
• East–West Corridor: Silchar (Assam) to Porbandar (Gujarat).
• Road density extremes (2011, NCERT): Jammu and Kashmir had 12.14 km per 100 sq km and Kerala had 517.77 km. The national average was 142.68 km.
• Border Roads: the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), set up in 1960, builds strategic roads in the northern and north-eastern border areas, including high Himalayan passes.
• Bharatmala Phase I: NHAI runs it under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. It plans 34,800 km, including 10,000 km of unfinished NHDP work. 18,714 km (54%) had been built by 31 October 2024 [2].
• PMGSY: the Ministry of Rural Development runs it. It was launched on 25 December 2000 [3]. Its RCPLWEA phase (2016) covers 44 districts in 9 states hit by Left Wing Extremism (the Maoist armed movement): Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh [3].

Don't confuse with

• National Highways vs Rural Roads: NHs carry the biggest share of traffic but only about 2% of length. Rural roads have the largest share of length, at 71% in MoRTH data [2].
• NHAI vs PMGSY: NHAI (operational in 1995) builds National Highways under MoRTH. PMGSY builds rural roads under the Ministry of Rural Development [3].
• Nagpur Plan (1943) vs Twenty-Year Road Plan (1961): the Nagpur Plan was the first plan, with four classes, made before Independence, and it failed. The Twenty-Year Plan came after Independence.
• Golden Quadrilateral vs Bharatmala: the GQ (1999, NHDP) joins the four metro cities. Bharatmala (2017) is its successor programme of 34,800 km [2].

Prelims Hooks

• India's road network is the 2nd largest in the world, at 63.45 lakh km in 2024 [2].
• Order by length (2019-20): Rural > District > Urban > Project > State Highways > National Highways [2].
• Shahi road / GT Road: built by Sher Shah Suri. The British route was Calcutta–Peshawar. Inside India today it runs Amritsar–Kolkata.
• Nagpur Plan, 1943: four classes (NH, SH, district roads, village roads). It failed because British India and the princely states did not coordinate.
• Corridors: North–South is Srinagar–Kanyakumari. East–West is Silchar–Porbandar.
• Dates: NHAI became operational in 1995. BRO was set up in 1960. PMGSY began on 25 December 2000 [3]. PMGSY-IV (2024-29) covers 25,000 habitations and 62,500 km at a cost of Rs 70,125 crore [3].

Mains Points

• Uneven road spread (GS-I): road density ranges from about 12 km per 100 sq km in J&K to about 518 km in Kerala (2011).
• Rugged land, few people and high building costs leave the Himalaya, plateaus and forests poorly served.

• Roads crowd around towns, so village road quality drops with distance from cities.

• Roads as the base of rural growth (GS-III): all-weather roads link farms to markets (GrAMs), schools and hospitals.

• PMGSY had completed 7,87,520 km, about 95% of sanctioned length, by December 2025 [3].

• Its focus has moved from new links (PMGSY-I) to upgrading roads (PMGSY-II and III), to roads in LWE areas (RCPLWEA), and now to the last unconnected habitations (PMGSY-IV).

• Strategic role and governance (GS-III): NHs and BRO roads carry defence traffic to the borders. NHs grew from 91,287 km in 2014 to 1,46,195 km in 2024 [2].

• Problem: Bharatmala Phase I overran its cost and time. The CAG found in 2023 that 158% of the approved money had been sanctioned while only 76% of the length had been awarded [2].
• Responses: e-MARG links payments to road condition, GPS and three-tier quality checks track the work [3], and PM Gati Shakti (2021) plans roads together with rail, ports and airports.

Related concepts

• Grand Trunk Road
• Nagpur Plan
• National Highways
• National Highways Authority of India
• State Highways
• Rural roads
• Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana

Read more

• Roads: history, network and classification