Construction of smart and sustainable roads has become need of the hour.
The boom India has recently seen in the quantum of roads and highways being constructed in the last decade, has been something beyond anyone’s dreams.
How is the roads & highways development progressing in the country?
The boom India has recently seen in the quantum of roads and highways being constructed in the last decade, has been something beyond anyone’s dreams. It started with addressing the need of the country to develop good enough infrastructure that will further the economy of the nation. But the initiative proliferated, transformed and evolved in myriad forms in various schemes, and programs that brought under its umbrella every possible developmental aspect of roads and highways like Gati Shakti, Multimodal Logistics Parks, Bharatmala Pariyojana, Special Accelerated Road Development Programme and National High-Speed Corridors.
Progress has been redefined with unprecedented record figures pegged. The National Highway network grew by 60%, rising from 91,287 km in 2014 to 146,195 km currently. NHAI surpassed its construction target for 2024-25 closing the year with 5,614 km of national highways constructed as against the target of 5,150 km for the year. The capital expenditure incurred by NHAI reached an all-time high of over Rs 2,50,000 crore (provisional) as compared to a target expenditure of Rs 2,40,000 crore. These are real figures that vehemently demonstrate the progress of road construction sector in our country.
Then again, it is not just about fiscal figures. The appropriate selection of projects to take up, from the perspective of its impact has been a huge contributor to this progress. We have planned and taken up, executed and inaugurated ambitious projects like the Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link (Atal Setu), the 6-lane Agra-Gwalior National High-Speed Corridor, the 4-lane Kharagpur-Moregram National High-Speed Corridor, and such others like The Shinkun La Tunnel will set to become the world's highest tunnel at 15,800 feet.
Innovation has stepped in, involving the best expertise of institutes like our IITs that have contributed to further development in technology. Based on this strength, we can now envisage an ambitious target to build 8,000 km of eco-friendly highways using recycled materials, emphasizing India’s commitment to sustainable development.
The Budget 2025-26 allocation for roads and highways has no significant increase compared to last year. Will this anyway impact the roads and highways development in the country in the coming years?
An allocation of Rs 2.87 lakh crore is a mere 2.4% increase over the last year of Rs 2.80 lakh crore. It is believed that this marginal rise is mainly because no new flagship highway development programme has been approved so far, and all major projects under execution have already been funded. It is important to first focus on the timely completion of these WIP projects in toto, so that they begin to deliver the ROI. Unforeseen delays in project completion raises the construction costs that have to be accounted for, too.
In 2025-26 while one of the focus areas of the government is reduction in the debt burden of NHAI, they have simultaneously opened a door of opportunity by encouraging public-private partnerships (PPP) to pool in. This means private companies will have more opportunities to invest in roads, bridges, and other infrastructure projects. This will prove to be a lucrative prospect for those who want to be a part of nation building in the real sense.
How are your road projects progressing? Which are your major upcoming projects?
Rajpath Infracon has successfully executed projects in government, semi-government, corporate, and cooperative sectors since the past 37 years. The combination of skill set and managerial dexterity has helped the company focus on more and more challenging assignments in its various work sectors.
Our work in the road construction sector has been particularly rewarding, in the sense that we have successfully delivered our Akola-Amravati NH6 Pkg 1 project in record time, which was abandoned earlier by two companies of high repute, and remained neglected for 10 years. To add icing on this cake, we successfully achieved and recorded a new Guinness World Record on this very stretch, which was the very first in the history of the road sector of Indian infrastructure.
We have always laid emphasis of timely deliveries and assured quality of our roads and all our rigid and flexible pavement road projects have demonstrated this. Presently, we are engaged with our major project of package 2 and 3 of a 6-lane access controlled, greenfield national highway project NH544G, in Andhra Pradesh that is progressing exceedingly well. In fact, it is foremost in project progress and has pegged the second completion milestone in record time.
What are the major challenges when it comes to the developments of roads & highways?
Since we have executed both greenfield as well as brownfield road projects, we now know they both have pros and cons. Greenfield projects may look discouraging owing to their high initial investment requirement. Building an establishment in the middle of no-where from scratch is not just daunting, but expensive too. The entire set-up right from erecting communication towers or sourcing electricity, gas, telecommunication, and even fuel and water, becomes a task in itself! Every activity is time-consuming and often permissions, clearances, and approvals take longer to come in, because everything is being built anew. There is also a constant risk of encountering unforeseen challenges, beside high iteration rates of manpower and resources. Such sites are often off the route and difficult to access, making every required service arduous to source, be it for food, plant and machinery maintenance and servicing technicians or medical assistance.
Brownfield projects on the other hand, present a rather complex array of challenges. They involve repurposing the existing roads in whatever condition they are, and often have a challenging squeezed window and stringent deadlines for completion. Beside operational disruptions that may crop up each day, there are also matters of the local communities that have to be taken into consideration. Ensuring equitable development is paramount, making it important to consider the long-term impacts on the community and to work towards inclusive outcomes that mitigate any displacement and ensure a positive impact of the project. There are scalability and expansion issues related to using already constructed facilities, and these have to be factored in at the design, approval stages and obtaining various mandatory clearances.
Last but not the least, there is always the matter of financial mechanisms that fund such road projects. However, there is light on the other end of the tunnel. Effective redevelopment strategies with innovative financing models and partnerships are now emerging as critical tools in overcoming such hindrances, and have been proving instrumental in facilitating redevelopment projects across the nation.
What are the key parameters that will enhance and support safety in road & highway construction?
A safe system only works when there is a high level of compliance. Even small reductions in risk can make a big difference. To be able to achieve this, everyone’s cooperation and initiative of the enforcement agencies becomes important. In today’s world where smarter and innovative technologies are contributing to safety solutions, it is heartening to see initiatives which apply technology to support their work, especially in the road construction sector.
This year there has been an unequivocal accent on road construction safety at all levels, starting right from MoRTH and NHAI. Today, road & highway construction safety initiatives encompass worker protection, traffic management, and public awareness, including mandatory safety audits, proper signage, traffic control measures, and robust training programs. Beside these key parameters, the concessionaires are encouraged to undergo Safety Audits of work sites regularly and ensure unconditional compliance aligned with the guidelines.
Safety is a full-time business, is what we believe at Rajpath Infracon. We are proud to share that at all our work sites our teams begin the day’s work only after reciting our Safety Pledge - an emphatic endorsement and affirmation and commitment to a safe working environment. We profess these three measures to keep our workplaces devoid of any incidence or casualties:
- Innovation: Go beyond the status quo and find ways to work safer and smarter.
What are your future plans of building safe roads?
Construction of smart and sustainable roads has become need of the hour. Besides, advanced technologies such as intelligent traffic management system, electronic tolling, network survey vehicles, project monitoring information system and wireless sensors being in place, high priority has been accorded to identification and rectification of blackspots (accidents prone spots) on National Highways, making concerted efforts towards improvement of road safety through engineering measures.
Constructing Roads such that they become a Safe travel/transportation System is a journey that will take time, commitment, and collaboration across disciplines. We definitely see a change today with stakeholders across the transportation community working towards advancing a Safe System Approach, making decisions guided by the underlying principles, and promoting implementation across the nation.
Moving forward, we can always embrace the application of AI which can provide technical services and advances technology deployment in performance-based safety and design areas. For instance, use of vision-based AI systems, which monitor driving behaviours, provide real-time coaching, and analyse vast amounts of data to identify potential risks before they escalate into accidents can be incorporated in ace of speed guns and road patrols.
As we look ahead to 2025 and beyond, India’s infrastructure journey continues with ambitious projects and a clear vision. Since we are aiming at creating a world class road infrastructure, we might as well adopt the global vision of Safe Systems approach. These advanc
ements can lead us to remarkable improvements in response time and avoiding the critical hour.
