Roads and highways

Detail

1. Size of the network

• India has the second-largest road network in the world, after the USA (Class 7, 2024) [2].
• Total road length: more than 63 lakh km (as on 31 March 2025) [3]. This confirms the scaffold's "about 63 lakh km".

Road type	Length (31 March 2025)	Share of total (approx.)
National Highways (NH)	1,46,204 km	~2.3%
State Highways (SH)	1,79,535 km	~2.8%
Other roads (district, rural, urban)	60,19,723 km	~95%

Source for the table: [3]

• Worked example: how small the NH share is.
• NH share = NH length ÷ total length × 100
• = 1,46,204 ÷ 63,45,462 × 100 ≈ 2.3%
• This matches the textbook line "NHs are only about 2% of road length".

2. Hierarchy of roads and who runs them

• A road hierarchy means roads are sorted into levels by what they do. Small local roads feed bigger roads, and the biggest roads join cities across states.

Tier	Purpose (Class 7)	Built and maintained by	Constitution
Village and local roads	Children to school, crops to market, ambulances to hospitals	Panchayats, local bodies, states	State List entry 13 (roads, bridges)
State highways	Connect towns and districts within a state	State public works departments (PWDs)	State List entry 13
National highways and expressways	"Super fast roads" joining cities across states; link to railway stations, airports and ports	Central government (MoRTH/NHAI)	Union List entry 23

• Trap to remember: roads in general are a State subject (entry 13). Only highways declared national highways are a Union subject (entry 23).
• MoRTH is the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. NHAI is the National Highways Authority of India, the central body that builds and runs many national highways.

3. National highways: length and growth

• NH length: 1,46,560 km (Year End Review 2025) [2]. (NCERT: about 1,50,000 km, 2025.) The 31 March 2025 figure was 1,46,204 km [3].
• Growth since 2014: NH length rose from 91,287 km (2014) to 1,46,560 km (2025), about 61% [2].

• Worked example: growth % = (new − old) ÷ old × 100 = (1,46,560 − 91,287) ÷ 91,287 × 100 ≈ 60.5%, rounded to 61%.

• Wider roads: NHs with 4 lanes or more grew from 18,371 km (2014) to 43,512 km (2025), more than double [2].

• Access-controlled high-speed corridors and expressways are roads where vehicles can enter and leave only at fixed points. Their length grew from 93 km (2014) to 3,052 km (2025) [2].
• Share of traffic: NHs are only about 2% of road length but carry roughly 40% of road traffic (verify; not confirmed by an official source here).

• Why this matters: a small, heavily used network → every km of NH is very valuable → spending on NHs gives a high return for goods and passengers.

• NH44 is the longest national highway: 4,112 km, Srinagar to Kanyakumari.

4. Flagship highway programmes

• Golden Quadrilateral (GQ):
• A highway loop joining the four metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.
• It was Phase I of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP) and is about 5,846 km long.
• Two corridors run alongside it:
  • North-South (NS) corridor: Srinagar to Kanyakumari.
  • East-West (EW) corridor: Silchar to Porbandar.

• Exam trap: the GQ joins the four metros. NS–EW is a separate cross-shaped corridor.

• Bharatmala Pariyojana (2017): an umbrella highway programme with these parts:

• Economic corridors: roads along the main routes that carry freight.
• Inter-corridor and feeder routes: roads that link corridors to each other and to smaller centres.
• Border and international-connectivity roads.
• Coastal and port-connectivity roads.
• Greenfield expressways: new roads built on fresh land, not by widening old roads.

• Progress:

  • 20,378 km built by March 2025 [3].
  • 22,590 km completed by 31 March 2026 [3][4].

• FASTag:

• FASTag is a sticker on the windscreen with an RFID chip. RFID (radio-frequency identification) is a chip that a toll-plaza reader scans by radio. The toll is deducted automatically from a linked account, so this is electronic toll collection (ETC).
• It became mandatory on national highways from February 2021.
• Benefits: shorter queues → less fuel burnt while idling → less cash handling and leakage.
• Reach: 11.86 crore FASTags issued, and more than 98% of highway toll collection was done through FASTag (December 2025) [2][3].

5. Bridges and tunnels where highways cannot go

• In dense forests, on wide river beds and in steep mountains, roads alone cannot provide access. Bridges and tunnels do this job instead.
• Dhola-Sadiya Bridge / Bhupen Hazarika Setu (2017):
• It is 9.15 km long and crosses the Lohit river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra.
• It links Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
• Before the bridge: people used ferries, which stopped during floods.
• After the bridge: travel is possible all year and takes 4 hours less.
  • Farmers get vegetables to market before they rot.
  • Patients reach hospitals even during floods.

• Class 7 calls it India's "second longest bridge". Atal Setu (Mumbai Trans Harbour Link, 21.8 km, opened January 2024) is now the longest sea bridge. Check the current rankings before you quote them (verify).

• Newer landmarks (verify):

• Atal Tunnel, Rohtang (2020).
• Chenab rail bridge (2025): the world's highest rail arch bridge.

• New Pamban vertical-lift sea bridge (2025).

• Living root bridges (jingkieng jri), Meghalaya:

• The Khasi and Jaintia communities grow them from the roots of Ficus elastica (the Indian rubber tree). They guide the roots across streams on bamboo and palm trunks.
• They take decades or centuries to mature. They stand 15–30 m high and can last hundreds of years.
• They are living structures with cultural meaning, and they link one generation to the next.
• They have been on UNESCO's tentative list since 2022.
• They are an example of indigenous, nature-based infrastructure: structures built by local people using living nature instead of concrete.

6. The colonial gap and last-mile connectivity

• Colonial legacy (Class 11):
• Railways began in 1853. Under British rule, roads were built mainly to move the army and to carry raw materials to railway stations and ports.

• Few all-weather roads (roads usable in every season, including the monsoon) reached villages. Rural people suffered badly during rains and natural disasters.

• Last-mile connectivity is the final leg that links a network, service or utility to the end user. It is often the costliest and weakest link. Examples:

• PMGSY (Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, launched December 2000) builds all-weather roads to rural habitations that had no road link. It fixes the gap Class 11 describes.
• Feeder buses and e-rickshaws for metro stations.

• Rishabh's autorickshaw ride (Class 7 story) is the last mile.

• PMGSY progress:

Item	Figure	Date
Road length sanctioned since launch	8,25,114 km	December 2025 [5]
Road length completed	7,87,520 km (~95%)	December 2025 [5]
Habitations sanctioned under PMGSY-I	1,63,339	2025 [6]
Habitations given all-weather roads (PMGSY-I)	1.62 lakh	1 August 2025 [6]
Eligible habitations covered (PMGSY-I)	99.38%	2025 [6]
PMGSY-II	target 50,000 km; 49,857 km sanctioned; 48,691 km done	December 2025 [5]
PMGSY-III	1,22,393 km sanctioned; 1,01,623 km (83%) built	December 2025 [5]

• Worked example: PMGSY physical progress.
• Progress % = completed ÷ sanctioned × 100

• = 7,87,520 ÷ 8,25,114 × 100 ≈ 95.4% [5]

• Closing the last-mile gap is the practical route to Kalam's urban-rural parity, meaning villages getting services on par with towns.

7. The safety cost of roads

• NHs make up about 2% of the road network but see about 28% of road accidents [7].
• Road accidents in 2022: 4,61,312 accidents, 1,68,491 deaths and 4,43,366 injured [8].

• Compared with 2021: accidents +11.9%, deaths +9.4%, injuries +15.3% [8].

• The chain: faster, wider roads → higher speeds and more vehicles → more severe crashes unless road design, enforcement and emergency care keep pace.

Prelims Hooks

• India has the second-largest road network in the world (after the USA). Its total length is more than 63 lakh km (31 March 2025) [3].
• Roads and bridges are in State List entry 13. National highways are in Union List entry 23. "Roads are a Union subject" is a common trap.
• NH length: 1,46,560 km (2025), up about 61% from 91,287 km (2014) [2]. NHs are about 2% of all roads.
• NH44 (Srinagar–Kanyakumari, 4,112 km) is the longest NH.
• Golden Quadrilateral = Delhi–Mumbai–Chennai–Kolkata, NHDP Phase I, about 5,846 km. The East-West corridor runs from Silchar to Porbandar.
• Bharatmala Pariyojana was launched in 2017. It had 22,590 km completed by 31 March 2026 [3][4].
• FASTag uses RFID. It became mandatory on NHs from February 2021, and more than 98% of NH tolls were paid through it (December 2025) [2][3].
• Bhupen Hazarika (Dhola-Sadiya) Setu crosses the Lohit river and links Assam–Arunachal Pradesh (9.15 km, 2017).
• Living root bridges are made from Ficus elastica by the Khasi and Jaintia communities of Meghalaya. They have been on UNESCO's tentative list since 2022.
• PMGSY was launched in December 2000. 99.38% of eligible habitations got all-weather roads under PMGSY-I (2025) [6].

Mains Points

• From a colonial network to an inclusive one:
• British roads served the army and exports, not villages.
• PMGSY (about 7.88 lakh km completed by December 2025) [5] and Bharatmala [3] try to reverse this.

• Balance matters: trunk corridors cut freight costs, while rural roads link farmers to markets, schools and hospitals.

• Where to spend next:

• NHs are about 2% of length but carry a very large share of traffic.
• So widening them gives high returns: 4-lane-plus NHs grew from 18,371 km to 43,512 km between 2014 and 2025 [2].

• The weak link is still the last mile. Village roads need regular maintenance money, not just construction money.

• Speed versus safety:

• NHs see about 28% of accidents [7], and road deaths reached 1,68,491 in 2022 [8].

• Useful answer points: engineering (black-spot correction), enforcement, emergency care, and safety audits built into highway contracts.

• Using technology and ecology together:

• FASTag's digital tolling cuts delay, fuel waste and leakage [2].
• Indigenous models like living root bridges and hill tunnels (Atal Tunnel) show that infrastructure in fragile Himalayan and North-East regions must fit the local terrain and climate.