#10: Why 40% of India's Roads Remain Unpaved?
About 30% of villages have no access to an all-weather road at all. When the monsoon rains arrive, many such roads turn to sludge and become impassable.
India has the second largest road network in the world – over 60 lakh kilometres of roads – yet an astonishing proportion of these are not even paved.
Roughly 40% of India’s roads are still simple dirt or gravel tracks rather than all-weather paved surfaces (link at bottom). This means that in thousands of villages, the main road is basically a mud path.
In fact, about 30% of villages have no access to an all-weather road at all. When the monsoon rains arrive, many such roads turn to sludge and become impassable.
It’s a startling reality in a country aspiring to be an economic superpower: nearly half of all streets can wash away or stall traffic whenever there’s heavy rain. This lack of basic road infrastructure is more than an inconvenience – it is a key factor dragging on India’s economic growth and development.
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Why are so many roads still unpaved?
Decades of under-investment and policy neglect left a huge backlog.
Until the year 2000, roughly 300 million Indians (about 30% of the population) lacked access to any all-weather road.
Rural areas were historically connected only by mud paths or gravel roads.
Paving these roads wasn’t prioritized for a long time. Even as recently as the 1990s, government funding for rural roads was scant.
When the ambitious Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) was launched in 2000 to finally connect villages with reliable roads, it faced a gigantic task of linking 1,78,000 unconnected villages by new roads.
Over the past two decades, PMGSY has built tens of thousands of kilometres of rural roads, giving millions in some of India’s poorest states an all-weather road near their homes for the first time.
This has been life-changing – children can go to school more regularly, farmers can take produce to market even in the rainy season, and patients can reach hospitals in emergencies.
However, progress has been uneven and incomplete.
As of today, a very large share of rural roads remains kuccha (unpaved).
Government statistics show that out of India’s extensive road network, a vast number of roads – on the order of a couple of million kilometres – are still unsurfaced. In some remote districts, villagers are still waiting for that first strip of tarmac to reach them.
There are multiple reasons why India has struggled to pave all its roads.
Funding has been a constant hurdle. Building and maintaining roads – especially paved ones – requires massive investment. For many years, India simply did not allocate enough money for roads, or the funds got spread too thin. A government analysis noted chronic “lack of funds” for road projects as a primary factor behind inadequate road development.
Projects often suffered delays and cost overruns even when money was budgeted due to poor project management. It’s not uncommon for road works to stall halfway because of mismanagement, slow procurement, or contractors abandoning work.
Bureaucratic red tape has played a role too. For instance, acquiring the land to lay a new road or widen an existing one can get bogged down for years in courts and paperwork. A 2017 report pointed to India’s “litigious system” making land acquisition difficult, significantly slowing down highway construction.
Additionally, many public-private partnership (PPP) projects in roads ran into trouble, with private partners backing out or projects becoming financially unviable.
All this has meant that road expansion in India was slower than needed for a long time.
Why Some States Race Ahead While Others Stall.
Political factors have also influenced where and how roads get built.
Road construction in India is split between the central and state governments, which means it often depends on effective coordination (or the lack of it) between different authorities.
Research has found that the central government sometimes favours states that are politically aligned with the ruling party when allocating road projects.
This can lead to inequalities – some states are getting new highways and rural roads more readily, while others lag if they are out of favour or have weaker political clout.
The end result is that infrastructure development varies widely across states.
Generally, southern and western states (like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, and Gujarat) have built better road networks over the years, whereas many northeastern and central states (like those in the Himalayan region or parts of eastern India) still have a high share of unpaved roads due to terrain and historical under-investment.
The rugged terrain and dense forests make road-building extremely challenging in the Northeast and hill states such as Himachal Pradesh or Meghalaya.
Constructing a paved road through mountains or jungles is costly and slow, and local contractors may lack the capacity for such challenging projects.
In some areas, there’s also the issue of insurgency or conflict – for example, parts of Jharkhand or Kashmir where security problems have impeded construction crews.
These factors add to the difficulty and explain why certain regions have remained literally off the paved road map.
The quality of construction is also an issue – roads built with substandard materials or poor techniques do not last long.
For years, corruption and corner-cutting meant some contractors delivered thin, shoddy roads that could not withstand heavy rain or traffic. Those roads soon revert to dirt.
So the statistic of 40% unpaved includes not just places that never got a paved road, but also places that got one and then lost it to decay.
Roadblocks on the Path to Economic Efficiency.
The economic impacts of India’s poor road infrastructure are enormous.
Transportation is the lifeblood of trade – and in India, roads carry about 70% of all freight and an even higher share of passenger travel.
When the road network is inefficient, the entire economy slows down.
One immediate effect is higher transport costs. Bad or unpaved roads make vehicle operation expensive and slow.
Trucks have to move cautiously on rough stretches; journeys that might take a few hours on a good highway can take double the time on potholed roads.
An analysis by the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council bluntly noted that poor road networks directly increase transportation costs, making goods less competitive and even contributing to higher inflation.
Because it costs more to haul vegetables, grains, or manufactured products to market on bumpy roads, the end prices of those goods end up higher for consumers.
Businesses, too, find their profitability hit by steep logistics expenses.
India’s overall logistics costs are around 14-18% of GDP, far higher than the global benchmark of ~8%.
Inefficient roads are a big reason why it costs so much more to move goods across India compared to, say, China or Europe.
For example, the average truck in India is estimated to cover only around 300–350 kilometres per day, whereas in countries with better highways, a truck routinely covers 500–800 km a day. This means a truck in India can only do half the work (or less) of a truck in the US or China simultaneously.
The slow speeds and frequent stops (thanks to congestion, checkpoints, and bad road conditions) translate to higher fuel consumption and labour costs per trip.
Vehicle wear and tear is also much worse on rough roads. Trucks, buses and even tractors driving on unpaved or potholed roads suffer more breakdowns and require more frequent maintenance – costs ultimately borne by the economy.
All these factors make transporting anything in India more expensive than it should be.
The waste is massive.
Take fuel consumption – vehicles guzzle extra fuel when roads are rough. Constant braking, accelerating and running in lower gears on bad stretches means poor mileage.
A scientific study in Pune found that just by keeping roads in good repair (smooth), one could reduce fuel use by about 2.3% for the traffic on those roads.
That might sound small, but 2% of fuel bills across millions of vehicles is enormous – the study calculated it would save “a few million litres” of fuel in one city alone. Scale that to the whole country: bad roads are causing many crores of rupees worth of fuel to be wasted every year.
This is an invisible tax we all pay for poor infrastructure.
The environmental cost is high too – wasted fuel means extra pollution.
India struggles with air quality, and smoother roads could cut vehicle emissions a bit by improving fuel efficiency. So, fixing roads isn’t just good for the economy; it also helps with cleaner air.
The Price of Being Left Behind.
Beyond costs and commerce, the human impact of unpaved roads is the most heartbreaking.
Poor road connectivity isolates communities.
Villages without all-weather roads are effectively cut off from the broader economy and services for part of the year. When rains flood the dirt road or turn it into muck, villagers cannot reach nearby towns.
Children literally cannot get to school on those days – either the school bus won’t come or they have to wade through mud on foot, which many simply can’t. This disrupts education, especially for girls and younger kids, who end up staying home during bad weather.
Healthcare suffers too: there have been countless cases of ambulances unable to reach a patient in time because the village road was impassable, or pregnant women being carried on charpoy cots to the highway because no vehicle can reach their hamlet.
Farmers in poorly connected areas face immense difficulties getting their produce to market. Without a reliable road, they must rely on bullock carts or tractors slogging through dirt tracks, which is slow and can ruin perishable produce. Often, they have no choice but to sell at throwaway prices to a local trader because taking their crop to a bigger market in town is too costly or risky on bad roads.
As one report succinctly put it, bad roads make people poorer. It’s a vicious cycle: a village has no good road, so it stays economically stagnant; because it’s poor, it gets ignored and still doesn’t get a road.
A Road Built is a Future Secured
Studies consistently show that building a road to a village boosts its economy – farmers get better prices, small businesses spring up, children get more years of schooling, and property values rise. We are denying many villages that opportunity by leaving them disconnected.
On the flip side, the places that have received new paved roads in recent years show what a game-changer this infrastructure can be.
Under PMGSY, researchers found that where villages gained an all-weather road to nearby towns, non-farm employment rose by 33% as men commuted for outside work, while women took over local farm activities, boosting household incomes.
Middle and high school students gained about one extra year of education on average.
Health outcomes improved too - home deliveries dropped by 30%, and young children had higher vaccination rates and fewer illnesses.
Thanks to this, the share of villages without road access has fallen – two decades ago it was 30%, now it’s closer to 10-15%.
These are profound changes in quality of life brought about simply by laying a proper road. So imagine the loss where such roads are absent: people in unconnected areas are essentially denied access to modern opportunities and services that others take for granted.
This is why activists say rural roads are not just transportation infrastructure but a social justice issue – they are lifelines for development.
Given these stakes, one would expect road construction to be a top national priority.
In recent years, it actually has been, and there have been significant improvements – though not enough yet to solve the problem.
The government has poured resources into building highways and rural roads.
India’s national highways network has expanded by about 60% in just the last decade, and the pace of highway construction reached a record high.
A few years ago India was building highways at only about 12 km per day; now it’s consistently around 30+ km of highways built per day (reaching ~34 km/day in 2023). This is a tremendous achievement – one of the fastest rates of road building in the world.
Brand-new expressways and economic corridors are coming up, and travel times between major cities have dropped.
The Bharatmala Pariyojana, launched in 2017, is an ambitious highway program aiming to add 34,800 km of national highways to improve connectivity across the country.
So far, however, it’s behind schedule – as of late 2024, only about 18,700 km of those roads had been constructed. In other words, roughly half the target has been met, and the deadline has been pushed out by several years.
This shows both the scale of progress (tens of thousands of kilometres built) and the scale of remaining work (another ~16,000 km to go in Bharatmala Phase I, plus even more in future phases).
On the rural roads front, PMGSY has also made great strides.
By one estimate, the program had built or upgraded over 600,000 km of rural roads by the 2020s, making it one of the largest infrastructure efforts in the world.
Government initiatives like these deserve credit, and the engineers and workers who toiled in tough conditions to lay roads in remote areas also deserve our gratitude.
Yet, despite this good work, the job is far from finished.
When 40% of the total road length in the country remains unpaved, it means millions of people are still left out of the gains.
New Roads, Old Cracks
Another issue is that building new roads alone isn’t enough if maintenance is ignored.
India has built highways at a record clip, but one can still find existing roads crumbling for want of repairs.
We often see a brand-new highway being celebrated while an older road nearby is riddled with cracks and potholes.
Paved roads require regular upkeep - filling potholes, re-sealing cracks, and strengthening the surface every few years.
Yet, maintenance budgets in India, especially for rural roads, have historically been inadequate. Many roads that were once paved have deteriorated into rubble after just a few monsoons, effectively becoming “unpaved” again.
This creates a vicious cycle: new roads are added at one end, while old ones are lost to neglect at the other.
Without sustained maintenance funding and stronger local accountability, the overall quality of the road network will never truly improve.
The government will need to ensure that every kilometre constructed is also protected through its full lifespan.
Miles to Go
In summary, India’s 40% unpaved roads are a glaring hindrance to its growth story. They slow down commerce, raise costs, and isolate a large part of the population from progress.
The economic losses from bad roads – in wasted fuel, higher vehicle costs, delayed shipments, and lost productivity – run into billions of dollars.
Worse, they rob countless Indians of education, healthcare, and jobs, leaving dreams stranded on dusty paths.
It is often said that roads are the arteries of a nation; by that analogy, India’s development is struggling with clogged arteries in many places.
The government’s recent push has recognized this: pouring concrete and asphalt at a faster pace than ever before.
Big-ticket projects like new expressways, the Bharatmala highway corridors, and dedicated rural road schemes under PMGSY are making a dent in the problem.
However, the fact remains that nearly half of all roads are still unmetalled.
The current efforts, while commendable, are still insufficient when measured against the gigantic backlog. India needs to not only build more roads but build them to last.
What can be done?
Clearly, sustained higher investment is needed – both from the government and via encouraging private investment where feasible – to fast-track the paving of roads.
We should ensure that remote and economically weaker regions get their fair share of projects, not just the rich states.
Streamlining land acquisition and clearance processes will help avoid delays.
Enforcing quality standards strictly can ensure new roads don’t fall apart prematurely.
And a dedicated focus on maintenance – perhaps a specific guaranteed portion of funds for road maintenance each year – will protect the assets we create.
Some experts also suggest using more local materials and labour under schemes like MGNREGA to maintain rural roads regularly, which would both upkeep the road and provide rural employment.
Innovation can help, too. For example, plastic waste can be used in road surfacing (a technique already tested in India), and concrete pavers can be used on village roads to resist water damage.
At a deeper level, the government must treat road connectivity as a basic necessity and a right for citizens – just like electricity or drinking water.
It empowers rural youth to seek jobs or education beyond their village, knowing they can come and go.
India has set itself ambitious targets to be a $5 trillion economy and to lift millions out of poverty.
Achieving those goals will be very difficult if a large population remains off the road.
Economists have pointed out that one reason India’s GDP growth has lagged behind China’s is the infrastructure gap – China built a phenomenal highway network connecting every corner of the country, while India did not keep up.
The Road Ahead: Making India’s Growth Inclusive
We are now trying to catch up.
The good news is that political will and investment can improve infrastructure relatively quickly.
The past few years have shown that the results can be dramatic when the government focuses on road-building (thousands of kilometres laid in a year).
The challenge is maintaining that momentum over the long term and extending it to every region and village that still lacks a proper road.
Citizens, too, have a role – by demanding better roads, monitoring local road works for quality (to prevent corruption), and holding leaders accountable for promises of connectivity.
In many places, villagers have come together to petition for roads or even pooled labour to improve dirt paths while awaiting government help.
In conclusion, the fact that 40% of roads in India are unpaved is not just a statistic – it is a call to action.
It signifies crores of people still waiting for a reliable road to their doorstep.
Roads are engines of growth: pave a road, and you pave the way for development to arrive.
To truly unlock India’s potential and ensure growth reaches every last village, the country must finish the job it started with programs like PMGSY.
The remaining dirt roads need to be turned into all-weather roads with a sense of urgency.
It’s often said that “Bharat” (rural India) and “India” are two different worlds – bridging that divide starts with building roads to connect them. Each unpaved stretch is a roadblock to progress. It is high time to pave it over.
The government’s initiatives so far are commendable and have shown what can be achieved; now we need more of it, faster, and in the places that need it most.
Investing in better roads will pay for itself many times over – through lower transport costs, higher rural incomes, and a more vibrant, integrated economy. Most importantly, it will ensure that no Indian is left stranded due to something as basic as a lack of a proper road.
The demand is simple and non-negotiable: good roads for all, not just for some.
India’s growth story will truly accelerate when every journey, whether a schoolchild’s daily trek or a farmer’s trip to market, can be made safely and swiftly on a paved road. That should be the measure of success for our infrastructure development – and it’s a goal well worth fighting for.
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Best,
Jayant Mundhra
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