India's Roads Are Becoming a Threat to Its Own Growth

India wants to become a manufacturing powerhouse. It wants companies to build here, global supply chains to move here and industries to expand here. The logic behind initiatives such as Make in India is straightforward: build the infrastructure, attract investment, create jobs and turn India into a larger manufacturing and export economy.

But there is a rather basic problem with that ambition.

Factories do not exist in isolation. They need roads.

A truck carrying components needs to reach the factory. Workers need to reach their workplaces. Finished products need to leave the industrial cluster and reach highways, ports and markets. When those roads become congested, waterlogged or riddled with potholes, infrastructure stops being a support system for economic growth and starts becoming a cost on it.

Pune's Chakan industrial belt illustrates the problem clearly. One of Maharashtra's major industrial clusters, the area's roads have deteriorated under years of heavy commercial traffic and inadequate maintenance. Recent reporting describes damaged and potholed surfaces, inadequate drainage and roads too narrow to comfortably handle heavy vehicles. One reported stretch can add 30 to 40 minutes simply to enter the industrial area. (The Times of India)

Industrialists have raised claims that companies could move out of the area. The Maharashtra government has disputed the widely circulated figure that 20 companies are preparing to leave Chakan, calling it a rumour. But the government has not disputed the underlying infrastructure problem. After meeting industrialists, the state promised to repair potholes and undertake a broader infrastructure overhaul. (The Times of India)

And that leaves a much bigger question unanswered:

If India is spending enormous amounts of money on roads, why are roads still failing badly enough to threaten the businesses that are supposed to drive India's next phase of growth?

This Is Not Simply a Story About Potholes

It is easy to dismiss India's road problem as an everyday inconvenience. Anyone who drives through an Indian city knows the routine: a newly repaired road develops cracks, the monsoon arrives, potholes appear, traffic slows down and the repair machinery starts again.

But the human cost is considerably larger.

India recorded 4,80,583 road accidents in 2023, resulting in 1,72,890 deaths and 4,62,825 injuries, according to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. (Ministry of Road Transport & Highways)

There is an important caveat: these are not deaths caused exclusively by bad roads. Overspeeding was the dominant reported cause of road accidents in 2023, accounting for 68.4% of accidents and 68.07% of fatalities. Road safety is therefore a broader problem involving driver behaviour, enforcement, vehicle safety and road design as well as road condition. (Moneycontrol)

But road condition still matters. A pothole can force a rider to suddenly change direction. Poor drainage can obscure the actual condition of a surface. A damaged road can reduce vehicle control. Poorly designed junctions can turn congestion into a safety hazard.

And the people most exposed are often those with the least protection: pedestrians, cyclists and two-wheeler riders.

So the road problem is not merely about whether a journey takes another 20 minutes.

Sometimes the cost is a hospital visit. Sometimes it is a life.

India Is Not Simply Refusing to Spend Money

This is where the story gets more uncomfortable.

If governments were spending almost nothing on roads, the explanation would be relatively simple: there is not enough money. But that is not what the numbers show.

The Union government has allocated ₹3,09,875 crore to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways for 2026-27, an 8% increase over the previous year's revised estimate. Of this, ₹1,87,293 crore is allocated to NHAI and ₹1,21,999 crore to roads and bridges. (PRS Legislative Research)

The government also expects to collect ₹46,930 crore through the Road and Infrastructure Development Cess in 2026-27. The cess is channelled through the Central Road and Infrastructure Fund and supports infrastructure spending across sectors and governments — it is therefore incorrect to treat the entire amount as a dedicated road-maintenance pot. (PRS Legislative Research)

The same pattern appears at the city level. Pune's road problem cannot simply be explained by saying the municipal corporation has no money. In 2023, PMC officials themselves estimated that the city needed around ₹700 crore to keep its roads in good condition while the provision at the time was only ₹193 crore. (Punekar News)

But spending on repairs has since grown sharply. A recent report based on PMC figures says the corporation spent approximately ₹2,108 crore on road repairs over the last four years, rising from around ₹252 crore in 2022-23 to about ₹900 crore in 2025-26. (Punekar News)

And yet Pune continues to deal with potholes. Between July 7 and August 19, 2026 alone, PMC recorded more than 27,000 square metres of patchwork and resurfacing work across several repair methods, according to civic records reported by Pudhari. (Pudhari News)

That does not prove that the money is being wasted. But it does raise the question that matters:

What are taxpayers actually getting for the money being spent?

Follow the Road, Not Just the Money

A road budget tells us how much money has been allocated. It does not tell us whether the resulting road will last.

The journey from public money to a functioning road passes through several stages: tender, contractor, materials, construction, inspection, certification, maintenance. Failure at any one of these stages can eventually appear to the citizen as the same thing: a broken road.

This is where India's procurement and construction system deserves scrutiny. The lowest bid — or L1 — system is not inherently corrupt. Selecting the lowest qualified bidder can be a perfectly legitimate way of protecting public money.

The problem begins when the system becomes excessively focused on the cheapest initial construction cost rather than the total cost of keeping a road functional for its entire life.

A contractor who builds a road cheaply is not providing value if that road needs repeated repairs soon afterwards. The important question is therefore not simply who built the road for the lowest price. It is who can build and maintain the road at the lowest lifecycle cost while meeting the required quality.

The difference sounds technical. For taxpayers, it can be enormous.

The Repair Loop

Consider what happens when a road fails prematurely.

First, the government pays to build it. Then the surface deteriorates. A repair tender is issued. A contractor repairs it. The road survives for some time. The problem returns. Another repair is required. And the cycle begins again.

Build. Fail. Repair. Repeat.

Pune's recent repair expenditure makes this question particularly difficult to ignore. If the reported ₹2,108 crore figure is confirmed against PMC's underlying expenditure records, it would mean a very substantial amount has gone into repairing roads over just four years — while the city continues to report widespread road damage. (Punekar News)

Roads naturally require maintenance, particularly in a country exposed to heavy monsoon conditions and rapidly increasing traffic. The problem is premature failure. If a road repeatedly requires major intervention before it should reasonably need it, repairing the surface without addressing the reason for the failure is not solving the problem. It is postponing it.

The Economic Cost of a Bad Road

This is where the argument moves beyond potholes.

Imagine a manufacturing company in Chakan. Its factory may have modern machinery, skilled workers and orders from customers across India or abroad. But every day, trucks have to enter and leave the industrial area.

If a truck spends an extra 30 minutes navigating congestion, that is a cost. If the road damages a vehicle, that is a cost. If traffic makes delivery times unpredictable, that is a cost. If workers spend significantly longer commuting, that is a cost. If a company has to maintain larger inventories because transport cannot be reliably timed, that is a cost.

None of these costs necessarily appear in the road department's budget. They appear somewhere else — in the company's operating expenses, workers' lost time, vehicle maintenance bills and ultimately the price of moving goods.

India's own road policy recognises the economic importance of this network. The government describes major highway programmes as a means of improving connectivity and reducing logistics costs. India has about 64 lakh kilometres of roads, according to PRS, while national highways constitute only about 2% of the network but carry around 40% of traffic. (PRS Legislative Research)

Road quality is therefore not merely a question of convenience. It is part of India's competitiveness. The government can offer incentives to manufacturers, promote industrial corridors, simplify regulations and invite global companies to build in India. But a factory still needs a road. A supply chain cannot run on an investment announcement. It has to run on physical infrastructure.

So Where Exactly Is the System Failing?

This is the question we should be asking instead of automatically blaming either the government or contractors.

Is the road being designed correctly? Is the material meeting specifications? Is the foundation being prepared properly? Is drainage being considered before the road is built? Is the contractor being adequately supervised? Is the work independently inspected? Is the contractor penalised when the road fails? Does the defect-liability period actually protect the taxpayer?

And perhaps most importantly: does the procurement system reward a road that lasts, or merely a contractor who can quote less?

There is also a governance problem hiding underneath all of this. Urban roads can involve municipal corporations, state departments, development authorities, industrial-development agencies, highways authorities and private contractors. Chakan itself demonstrates how fragmented responsibility can become — different roads and infrastructure elements involve different agencies, while industrialists and residents experience all of them simply as the road. (The Times of India)

For the citizen, the question is brutally simple: who is responsible for making sure this road works?

If the answer requires navigating five government departments, three contractors and multiple jurisdictions, accountability has already become difficult. And that is where corruption, if it exists, becomes easier to hide — but poor governance can produce the same outcome even without a corrupt transaction.

We should therefore be careful. A bad road is not automatically proof of corruption. But a system in which poor-quality work repeatedly escapes meaningful consequences creates an environment in which waste, negligence and corruption can survive.

We Know the Roads Are Bad. So Why Does the Loop Continue?

This may ultimately be the most uncomfortable part of the story.

The complaints are not new. The potholes are not new. The traffic is not new. The maintenance problem is not new. And governments are not unaware of it.

The latest response in Chakan is itself proof of that. After industrialists raised concerns, the Maharashtra government promised pothole repairs by August 31 and a wider infrastructure overhaul within ten months. (The Times of India)

But this is exactly where India needs to distinguish between response and reform. Filling today's potholes is a response. Fixing the process that creates tomorrow's potholes is reform. The former is visible. The latter is much harder.

It requires better planning, stronger construction supervision, transparent contractor performance records, lifecycle-based procurement, meaningful penalties and clear responsibility for failures. And perhaps a willingness to ask an uncomfortable question every time a road fails: why did it fail in the first place?

India's Growth Cannot Run on Broken Infrastructure

India's next economic phase is supposed to be built on manufacturing, investment, exports and infrastructure. That makes the humble road much more important than it appears.

A road connects a worker to a factory. A supplier to a manufacturer. A manufacturer to a warehouse. A warehouse to a port. And ultimately, an Indian product to a global customer.

India does not necessarily have a shortage of money for roads. It has a much harder problem to solve: ensuring that the money already being spent consistently produces infrastructure that works and lasts.

The answer may be better materials in some places. Better drainage in others. Better engineering, procurement or maintenance elsewhere. And where there is evidence of corruption or contractor capture, that must be investigated and punished.

But simply repairing another pothole and moving on will not solve a system that keeps producing them.

Because if India wants to compete for the factories, supply chains and investment that will drive its next phase of growth, it cannot afford to have the infrastructure supporting that ambition become its weakest link.

A country preparing to build the world's next manufacturing powerhouse cannot keep rebuilding the same road.