India’s New Highways

First Published Date : November 29, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

India is a nation that is growing quickly, but one of the main problems with it is the fact that it has some very poor highways. These highways have been made haphazardly for many years and that has led to very unsafe roads. That leads to many companies to worry about investing in India because if they do not have a proper infrastructure, then they may not be able to handle the immense traffic going in and out of the country. As a result, the country has implemented the National Highways Development Project as a way to upgrade, improve and widen the major highways in India to meet the standards of the developed world.

The project began in 1998 when the national highways of the country accounted for only two per cent of the roads but carried 40 per cent of the traffic. Currently, the project is managed by the national Highways Authority and as of 2010, the department has put $100 billion into the project.

The overall project to improve the road of India, making it easy to trade with other countries and improve its standing with investors in developed countries, has several phases.

The first phase is connecting the Golden Quadrilateral, running 5,796 km, with the four major cities of Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai. The total cost of the project is $6.8 billion, funded mostly by the government and their oil production tax. Currently, the phase is near completion.

The second phase is to connect the four points of the country, the east, west, north and south. This project will run 7,300 kilometers, effectively connecting the outreaches of the country. Currently, roughly 50 per cent of the project is complete, costing $10 billion so far.

The third phase is to upgrade the 12,000 kilometers of the national highways in the country, connecting all the major cities. Currently, only 2,000 kilometers have been completed.

The fourth phase is to widen roughly 20,000 kilometers of road that are not part of the first three phases. This phase has not been started yet.

The fifth phase is to upgrade four lane highways to six lane highways, comprising about 5,000 kilometers of roads. This phase has not been started yet.

The sixth phase is to connect commercial and industrial towns with expressways, This comprises several hundreds of kilometres.

The seventh phase will add ring roads to help improve connectivity of national highways to major cities in the country. There are several projects being proposed in this regard.

These projects are going to help India reach a new level of development. For the country, having a great infrastructure is important because investors will look at that and decide to invest in the country. In addition, these massive building projects will help give hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people work, raising the standard of living for them and bringing many out of poverty. It is good for the country, the people and the world, as India becomes a more developed country.

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