Roads in India

India has nearly 2 million kilometers of roads: 960,000 kilometers of surfaced roads and more than 1 million kilometers of roads in India are constructed of gravel, crushed stone, or earth. Fifty-three highways, just under 20,000 kilometers in total length, are rated as national highways, but they carry about 40 percent of the road traffic. To improve road transportation, significant efforts were begun in the 1980s to build roads to link major highways, to widen existing roads from single to double lanes, and to construct major bridges.

These road-building achievements in India represent an impressive expansion from the 1950 total of 400,000 kilometers of roads of all kinds, but more than 25 percent of villages still have no road link, and about 60 percent have no all-weather road link. These statistics, however, mask important regional variations. Almost all villages in Kerala, Haryana, and Punjab are served by all-weather roads. By contrast, only 15 percent of villages in Orissa and 21 percent in Rajasthan are connected with all-weather roads. The quality of roads, including major highways, is poor by international standards. Nonetheless, roads in India carry about 60 percent of all passenger traffic.

The central and state governments share responsibilities for road building and maintaining Indian roads and for some transportation companies. The Ministry of State for Surface Transport in India administers the national highway system, and state highways and other state roads are maintained by state public works departments. Minor roads in India are maintained by municipalities, districts, and villages. Still other Indian roads, about 22,000 kilometers in total in 1991, are under the jurisdiction of the Border Roads Development Board, a central government organization established in 1960 to facilitate economic development and defense preparedness, especially in the north and northeast