Minister of
Road Transport and Highways of India, Nitin Gadkari recently dominated the
headlines at a rally in Bhim Nagar’s Ram Leela ground. Gadkari was addressing a
crowd of 2,000-2,500 people ahead of the Haryana assembly polls to be conducted
on October 5. He said, “Haryana’s
national highways infrastructure will be better than the US (United States of
America) by the end of 2024… Work in this 10 years was just a trailer, asli
film shuru hona baaki hai.” Before this rally, Gadkari has made similar claims
about making India’s infrastructure similar to or even better than the US. Is
implementing this claim on the ground practically possible? The explainer
written below tries to find an answer to this question.
To get the answer to this question, we primarily
looked at data from many sources including reports from Nitin Gadkari’s
ministry and the US Department of Transportation (Federal Highway
Administration – FHWA). The reports from the National Highways Authority of
India (NHAI) and the highway infrastructure of India and America were also
looked upon. In these reports, we tried
to understand the challenges of both the US and India’s highway systems.