'Highways function as economic corridor'

Every ₹ invested in highways generates ₹3 in GDP, says MoS Road Harsh Malhorta at 31st edition of Delhi Dialogues

- 

AST Delhi BJP MP Harsh Malhotra speaks to editors of this newspaper about the pace of road infrastructure expansion in the country.

The Union MoS of Road Transport, Highways and Corporate Affairs answers a range of questions uppermost in people's minds. Excerpts:

We always hear that there are a lot of initiatives to improve quality of road matching international standards. How much success have we achieved? The progress achieved over the past decade represents a structural shift rather than incremental change. For nearly 65 years after Independence, India built around 92,000km of national highways. In contrast, over the last 11 years, the national highway network has expanded to approximately 1.46 lakh km, significantly improving connectivity across regions, including some of the country's most remote areas.

The transformation is not limited to length alone but also to pace and quality. Before 2014, highway construction progressed at an average speed of about 12 km a day. Today, that figure stands at nearly 32 km per day. At the same time, systematic widening has upgraded two-lane roads to four-lane roads and four-lane highways to six-lane highways, improving safety, speed, and capacity. The length of high-speed corridors has increased to around 2,500 km of expressways.