India builds roads faster than most countries, yet they fail within weeks. Explore how climate, overloading, tendering flaws, and public behavior accelerate road collapse—and what can fix it.
Brajesh Mishra
In recent years, India has witnessed an unprecedented pace of road construction. National highways, expressways, rural connectivity projects — all have expanded at record speed. Between 2014 and 2024, India added over 1.02 lakh kilometers of national highways. That's like building a road from Earth to the Moon and back—twice. We went from laying 12 km of highway per day to 37 km. The budgets? Tens of thousands of crores annually.
Yet every monsoon, your feed fills up with the same content: freshly built roads in Jharkhand crumbling within weeks, Pune's resurfaced streets already potholed, Bihar villagers literally fishing out of road craters.
India is building more roads than ever before, but they're failing faster than a trending meme dies which raises a critical question: if money is being spent and roads are being built, why do they not last?
The transformation in India's road sector is undeniable. Expressways like the Delhi–Mumbai Expressway, Samruddhi Mahamarg, and the upcoming Bharatmala corridors symbolize speed and ambition. These are showcase projects meant to rival anything in the developed world.
But the ground reality often looks different. The Samruddhi Expressway — a showcase corridor connecting Nagpur and Mumbai — faced complaints of rutting and potholes within its first monsoon. In Gujarat, a newly laid eight-lane highway developed cracks within a year. In metropolitan areas like Mumbai, stretches of the costly Coastal Road project needed resurfacing even before full completion.
The financial stakes are equally striking. Just in Uttar Pradesh, a CAG audit found ₹40,000 crore spent between 2011 and 2016 on road works, yet irregularities in tendering and execution meant many projects required repair well before their intended design life.
The paradox isn't about India failing to build roads. It's that roads are being built faster than ever, yet they're also failing faster than expected.
To understand why roads fail, it helps to understand what they’re made of.
Despite these options, asphalt dominates because it’s cheaper upfront and faster to lay — even if it wears out sooner.
By contrast, countries like the US, Japan, and Germany routinely design asphalt for 20–30 years and concrete for 40+ years. The issue isn’t only how we build — but what we build for.
When a brand-new highway develops cracks within weeks, the immediate reaction is to blame “poor quality work” and the “Central Govt.” But the reality runs deeper. The issue is not just the asphalt or concrete — it’s in the way roads are planned, tendered, and executed in India.
Take the case of an eight-lane stretch in Jharkhand that collapsed just 21 days after its inauguration, or the ₹80 crore concrete road in Maharashtra that split open in its very first monsoon. These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a pattern repeated across states, pointing to deeper structural flaws.
One of the biggest reasons is the lowest-bid (L1) tendering system. Projects are typically awarded to the contractor who quotes the cheapest rate. On paper, this saves public money. In practice, it often produces unrealistic bids — sometimes 40–50% below official cost estimates. To survive at those margins, contractors cut corners: thinner asphalt layers, weaker aggregates, skipped lab tests. The result? A road designed for 15–20 years fails in less than five.
Audits by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) have repeatedly flagged irregularities. In some states, contracts were awarded at nearly 40–50% below estimated costs, raising the question: how can a road meant to last 15–20 years be built at half its intended price without compromising somewhere?
Oversight is another weak link. Engineers tasked with supervision often skip site visits or pre-announce inspections, giving contractors time to prepare “showcase” samples. In Kerala, a 2020 audit revealed that 85 out of 92 tested projects had no mandatory field labs, no proper job mix formulas, and yet were passed as “satisfactory.”
For the public, the consequences are felt daily. Every time a road caves in, taxpayers don’t just pay once. They pay twice — first for construction, then again for emergency patchwork. Add to that the hidden costs: higher fuel consumption, damaged vehicle suspensions, lost work hours in traffic jams, and even ambulances slowed down on broken stretches.
This isn’t just a story of bad roads — it’s a story of systemic cracks in the very process meant to build them.
It’s easy to point fingers at contractors, engineers, or officials. And yes, their role in poor-quality execution is undeniable. But step back for a moment: could it also be that India’s own conditions — our climate, traffic, and behavior — make roads here far harder to build and maintain than elsewhere?
Extreme Climate Stress affects roads differently across the country. In Rajasthan, summer surface temperatures hit 70°C, softening asphalt and causing rutting. In the Himalayas, repeated freeze-thaw cycles crack concrete slabs. Along coasts, salt-laden air corrodes reinforcement in rigid pavements. In the Northeast and Kerala, monsoons waterlog subgrades, cutting road life by 40%.
Few countries face deserts, glaciers, tropical monsoons, and coastal humidity—all within one road network.
Then there’s the traffic. On paper, India’s pavements are designed for legal axle loads. In practice, 60–70% of two-axle trucks run overloaded by 20–50%, slashing pavement life by half. Add to that a road culture of sudden braking, frequent encroachments, and unauthorised speed breakers — all of which introduce stresses the road was never designed to take.
Public behaviour creates additional stress. Unauthorised speed breakers crack pavements. Debris from construction trucks abrades surfaces. Utility cuts dig up brand-new roads for pipelines or cables. Encroachments block drainage channels, letting water seep in and erode subgrades.
So perhaps the question isn’t only “Why are Indian roads built poorly?” but also “Are we asking them to survive conditions few roads anywhere could withstand?”
These steps won't make Indian roads indestructible, but they can make them stronger, cheaper over the long run, and better suited to Indian conditions.
India builds more roads than almost any other country in the world. The problem isn't the pace—it's the durability.
The report is clear. Systemic issues in tendering and oversight weaken construction quality. Climate extremes, traffic overloading, and public behaviour accelerate deterioration. But smart technologies and better governance can stretch every rupee further and extend road life significantly.
Blame alone won't fix the problem. What will, is a fundamental shift in mindset—treating roads not as short-term assets to be patched up each monsoon, but as long-term public investments that must withstand India's unique conditions.
The next time a highway cracks weeks after inauguration, the question shouldn't just be "Who is to blame?"
It should be: "What needs to change so it doesn't happen again?"
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