Roads in India
Roads in India are an important mode of transport in India. India has a network of over 6,617,900 km of roads. As of December 2025, India has the largest road network in the world. At of roads per square kilometre of land, the quantitative density of India's road network is equal to that of Hong Kong, and substantially higher than the United States, China, Brazil and Russia. Adjusted for its large population, India has approximately of roads per 1,000 people, which is much lower than United States but higher than that of China. India's road network carries over 71% of its freight and about 85% of passenger traffic.
Since the 1990s, major efforts have been underway to modernize the country's road infrastructure. As of 31 March 2020, 70.00% of Indian roads were paved. As of 31 December 2023, India had completed and placed into use over of four or more lane highways connecting many of its major manufacturing, commercial and cultural centres. According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, as of March 2021, India had about of national highways and expressways, plus another of state highways. Major projects are being implemented under the Bharatmala, a Government of India initiative. Private builders and highway operators are also implementing major projects.
Organization
The Indian road network is administered by various government authorities, given India's federal form of government. The following table shows the total length of India's road network by type of road and administering authority as of 2020| Category | Managing Authority | Length | Length percentages |
| National highways | Ministry of Road Transport and Highways | 151,000 | 2.19% |
| State highways | Public works department of state/union territory | 186,528 | 3.00% |
| District Roads | Public works department of state/union territory | 632,154 | 10.17% |
| Rural roads | Panchayats and PMGSY | 4,535,511 | 72.97% |
| Urban roads | Municipal corporations and municipalities | 544,683 | 8.76% |
| Project roads | Various government departments of states/union territories, and SAIL, NMDC and BRO | 354,921 | 5.70% |
| Total | Total roadways | 6,404,797 km | 100% |
History
The first evidence of road development in the Indian subcontinent can be traced back to approximately around 2800 BC in the ancient cities of Harrapa and Mohenjodaro of the Indus Valley civilization. Ruling emperors and monarchs of ancient and medieval India continued to construct roads to connect the cities. The existing Grand Trunk Road was re-built by the Mauryan Empire, and further rebuilt by subsequent entities such as the Sur Empire, the Mughal Empire and the British Empire.In the 1830s, the British East India Company started a programme of metalled road construction, for both commercial and administrative purposes. The Grand Trunk Road – from Calcutta, through Delhi to Peshawar – was rebuilt at a cost of £1,000 per mile; roads from Bombay to Pune, Bombay to Agra and Bombay to Madras were constructed; and a Public Works Department and the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee were founded, to train and employ local surveyors, engineers and overseers, to perform the work, and to maintain the roads. This programme resulted in an estimated of metalled roads being constructed by the 1850s.
In December 1934, the Indian Roads Congress was formed, on the recommendations of the Indian Road Development Committee of the Government of India. In 1943, they proposed a twenty-year plan to increase the road network from to by 1963, to achieve a road density of 16 km per 100 km2 of land. The construction was to be paid in part through the duty imposed, since 1939, on petrol sales. This became known as the Nagpur Plan. The construction target was achieved in the late 1950s. In 1956, a Highways Act was passed, and a second twenty-year plan proposed for the period 1961–1981, with the ambition of doubling road density to 32 km per 100 km2. This second plan became known as the Bombay Road Plan.
In 1988, an autonomous entity called the National Highways Authority of India was established by an Act of Parliament and came into existence on 15 June 1989. The Act empowered NHAI to develop, maintain and manage India's road network through National Highways. However, little happened until India introduced widespread economic liberalization in the early 1990s. Since 1995, NHAI has increasingly privatized road network development in India.
File:Golden Quadrilateral.svg|thumb|Golden Quadrilateral connects the four major Metropolitan Cities of India, viz., Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai.
In 1998, National Highways Development Project was started by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The flagship project of the NHDP is the Golden Quadrilateral, a total of of four-to-six-lane highways connecting the four major cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. The total cost of the project is, funded largely by the government's special petroleum product tax revenues and government borrowing. In January 2012, India announced that the four-lane GQ highway network was complete.
Another important road project of the NHDP is the four-to-six-lane North–South and East–West Corridor, comprising national highways connecting four extreme points of the country. The project aims to connect Srinagar in the north to Kanyakumari in the south, and Silchar in the east to Porbandar in the west. As of 31 October 2016, 90.99% of the project had been completed, 5.47% of the project work is under implementation and 3.52% of the total length is remaining.
As of May 2017, under NHDP, about of four-to-six-lane highways have been constructed, while a total of of road has been planned to have four-to-six lanes under the NHDP.
The National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited is a Public Sector Enterprise created by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Government of India in the year 2014 to build highways in technical challenging and high altitude regions of the Northeast India, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. It has the task to implement the Special Accelerated Road Development Programme for North Eastern Region in National Highways portion. The SARDP-NE is under implementation in Phases.
- Phase-A: Approved in 2005, it included about 4,099 km length of roads. The SARDP-NE Phase ‘A’ is expected to be completed by 2023–24.
- Phase-B: It covers 3,723 km of road. Phase ‘B’ of SARDP-NE shall be taken up after completion of Phase ‘A’.
India's rate of road building has accelerated since 2010s. It averaged about per day in and per day in 2018–19. The country's target is to build of highways per day.
On July 21, 2021, the Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said that India has created a world record of constructing of four-lane concrete road in 24 hours and of single lane bitumen road in just 21 hours as per the highest IRC norms and specifications of the MoRTH to ensure quality control. Also, an average of of highways have been constructed every day during 2020–21. As of 2021, 64.5% of all goods in India are moved through the country's road network, 90% of India's total passenger traffic uses the road network to commute and the road network contributes 4.8% to the country's gross domestic product.
In 2023, India's road network became the world's second largest, after the United States. From 2013 to 2014 to 2022 to 2023, the country's road network grew by approximately 59%. In August 2023, the Border Roads Organisation, a statutory body under the Ministry of Defence, began construction on the Likaru-Mig La-Fukche road in Ladakh, which on its completion will be the world's highest motorable road.
Types of roads
Expressway
As per NHAI and Indian Roads Congress, expressways are access controlled highways with a divided carriageway, designed for high speed vehicular movement and heavy traffic. Most of the existing expressways in India are toll roads. Expressways make up approximately of India's road network, as of 2024.National Expressways Authority of India operating under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways will be in-charge of the construction and maintenance of expressways. The NHAI by Government of India aims to expand the expressway network and plans to add an additional of expressways by 2024 apart from existing national highways.
India's first 8-lane wide access-controlled expressway, the Delhi Noida Direct Flyway, operational in January 2001, is an expressway connecting Delhi and Noida in the states of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. The Mumbai Pune Expressway, connecting Mumbai and Pune in Maharashtra fully operational in 2002, is India's first 6-lane wide access-controlled tolled expressway. The Yamuna Expressway is a six-lane controlled-access expressway opened on 9 August 2012. On 21 November 2016, the six-lane Agra Lucknow Expressway was opened. Under construction as of 2019, the Mumbai–Nagpur Expressway is expected to become the largest expressway in the country. Several expressway projects, such as the Delhi–Mumbai Expressway, Amritsar–Jamnagar Expressway, Surat–Chennai Expressway, Delhi-Jaipur Expressway,Ganga Expressway Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway are planned/under-construction.
The Trans Harbour bridge is the longest bridge in India and it will be opened on 12 January 2024, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates the bridge. It connects Bombay with Navi Mumbai.