GOLDEN QUADRILATERAL, 1999 - TAKING THE HIGHWAY

Golden Quadrilateral showed how to turn a bold vision into reality. Indian highway-building leapfrogged into the future, and the scorching pace hasn't stopped since

- BY AVISHEK G. DASTIDAR

Hamare desh mein sadkon mein gaddhe hain ya gad- dhon mein sadkein (Do we have potholes on our roads, or roads in potholes)?” Fiery Opposition leader that he was, Atal Bihari Vajpayee would often ask this question by way of sharp critique of the state of India's highways. So, when he returned as prime minister in 1998—after a short-lived stint in 1996—one of the first things he did was to ask the ministry of surface transport to identify the most congested highway stretches in the country and find long-term solutions for them. The result was the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) project, a visionary initiative launched in 1999 to connect the four metros of the coun- try—Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chen- nai—with a 5,846-km network of four-lane highways. That ambitious plan became the foundation of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), the largest road infrastructure initiative in modern India.