Bump, bump, bump: National highways are painfully potholed as only building them is a priority, maintenance is lax

Source: The post is based on the article “Bump, bump, bump: National highways are painfully potholed as only building them is a priority, maintenance is lax” published in The Times of India on 18^th October 2022.

Syllabus: GS 3 – Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.

Relevance: About the condition of National Highways in India

News: The bountiful southwest monsoon damaged India’s exhaustive road network. Further, numerous reports of national highways (NHs) underline something is broken in the overall approach to road building and maintenance.

About national highways

Roads are India’s dominant mode of transport, measuring 6.3 million kilometres by March 31, 2019. The national highways comprise a mere 2% of this sprawling system, but they’re the country’s arterial network.

Seven years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that road concessionaires cannot collect tolls from commuters if roads are in bad shape. But this is not followed in many NHs. For instance, The Gurgaon-Jaipur stretch of NH-8 for example saw a hiked toll come into effect on September 1, but it remains incomplete and painfully potholed.

What are the challenges associated with NHs in India?

Role of GOI: Private concessionaires undertake almost 50% of NH expansion through the hybrid annuity model. But the GoI is legally responsible for the development and maintenance of NHs.

Less allocation for maintenance: The overall budgetary allocation for maintenance is less than 4% of the overall budget. Annual budgetary outlay for maintenance and repairs is only about 40% of the estimated need as per the recent parliamentary standing committee information. This data pertains to NHs directly under GoI’s supervision.

India’s choice is not perfect: India’s preferred option is bituminous roads which are particularly prone to damage on account of water-logging. The alternative of concrete roads has a higher upfront cost but comes with fewer maintenance challenges.

NH expansion over the last few years has been impressive, the same cannot be said of drive quality and road quality.

What needs to be done?

India has unveiled an integrated logistics policy, its approach to road-building and maintenance needs an upgrade too. Such as,

Increase the allocation for maintenance: Niti Aayog wants the allocation for maintenance to be raised in the interim to at least 10% before aiming for the 40-50% share that developed countries have.