CONCRETE GROWTH PATH

India's infrastructure journey over 20 years has transformed roads, rails, airports and ports, reshaping growth and connectivity. What lies ahead?

- By Ashish Sinha

INDIA'S INFRASTRUCTURE STORY over the past two decades reads like a long, ambitious road trip—sometimes smooth, occasionally bumpy, but relentlessly forward-moving. From pothole-plagued stretches to gleaming expressways, halting regional flights to bustling new terminals, and diesel-hauling freights to near-complete electrification, the transport map has been rewritten.

Start with roads: the pace of highway building has been breathtaking. India's national highway network has expanded dramatically—now more than 145,000 kilometres—transforming connectivity between metros, Tier-2 towns and hinterlands and slashing travel times for people and freight alike. This was powered by mega-programmes such as Bharatmala, a sharper push on expressways, and innovative financing models that bundled projects and securitised future tolls. The scale shows up in the cash flows too: toll collections touched Rs 61,000 crore in FY24, reflecting both higher vehicle movement and more controlled systems on new expressways.

Road agencies also got serious about quality and speed. India now has thousands of kilometres of access-controlled expressways and has piloted multi-lane free-flow (barrier-free) tolling to cut queues and emissions. The road sector's capital outlay has ballooned — the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways was allocated Rs 2.78 lakh crore in Union Budget FY25, with NHAI alone handling projects worth more than Rs 1.6 lakh crore that year—underlining the political and budgetary backing for big-ticket pavement projects.

Transportation on Fast Track