India’s road problem
China’s massive road-building programme is immediately visible to visitors. The pace of investment in the network has accelerated since 2011 – the chart below shows progress over the past decade. Not only that, the Chinese are planning to increase their highway network by another 50% by 2035.
Transport investment in China vs OECD countries (2008-18)
Volume of investment in inland transport infrastructure in China (solid blue) vs OECD-30 countries (blue dashes). OECD
On paper, it looks as though India’s road infrastructure is better. The cumulative road network is 5.9 million kms, which is longer than China (4.6 million kms), though slightly smaller than the US (6.7 million kms). The density of India’s road network, at 1.62km of roads per square kilometre of land, is much higher than the US (0.68) or China (0.49) – though this is not surprising when you reflect that both these rivals are geographically three times larger than India.
However, the quality of India’s road infrastructure is very poor: only 3% of these roads are national highways, and 75% of highways are only two-lane. Roads are congested and road maintenance is under-funded. At the same time, 40% of the roads are dirt roads, and over 30% of villages have no access to all-weather roads.
Many explanations have been given for India’s inadequate road investment, including lack of funds and poor project management. An Economist article from 2017 blamed a litigious system that makes it hard for the government to requisition land, as well many public-private partnerships stalling.
We recently published a paper arguing that India’s political system is another factor. Road-building is jointly the responsibility of the central government and each state. The central government rewards states which are politically aligned with the ruling party, particularly the core supporters.
In addition, road building requires coordination between states and central government to get around obstacles like land acquisition, planning permission and vetting of tenders – all of which can delay projects and lead to huge cost overruns. The need for green transport infrastructure is another issue. All this requires the central government to cooperate with states from across the political spectrum.