India's Steep Highway Tolls May Have Angered Its Middle Class

Expensively financed roads have spelt exorbitant costs of usage

- ANDY MUKHERJEE

The American way of life in the second half of the 20th century came to be synonymous with big cars, bigger trucks and sprawling freeways on which they scurried about like purposeful ants. Cheerleaders point to productivity growth and the 24 cents saved by private industry for every dollar invested in the US highway network; critics talk about communities gutted by asphalt and the weakening of social ties. Decades later, the car economy, with all its promises and pitfalls, has latched on to a new host half a world away.

At 6 million-plus kilometers, India's road network is the world's second largest now after the US, according to official data from New Delhi. Leave aside the vast differences in their quality, the most-populous nation has more than twice as many kilometers of roads per sq-km of land as the US, a much bigger country by size. China, which has built a lot of highways but chosen high-speed trains as the focal point of transport, has a much lower density.