India's modern highway story began in 1998, when the Vajpayee government launched the National Highways Development Project and built the Golden Quadrilateral linking Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. After 2014 the pace jumped sharply — the national highway network grew from about 91,000 km to over 146,000 km by 2025. The turning point was the Bharatmala Pariyojana (October 2017), a corridor-based programme that replaced scattered, state-by-state planning with a single national blueprint of economic corridors, border and coastal roads, and expressways.
Roads & Highways
Roads & Highways
National highways, expressways, rural roads.
India's National Highway network roughly doubled in a decade, from about 91,000 km in 2014 to over 146,000 km in 2024. The Intensity view shades each state by its highway length; the Network view traces the Golden Quadrilateral, the North–South and East–West corridors, and the newer expressways in the year each opened.
1,46,145 km
National highway network
34 km/day
Construction pace
7,000+ km
Operational expressways
Expressway network
Expressway — post-2014 growth
GQ / NSEW backbone
2014
0expressway km
0 expressways+ GQ & NSEW backbone
20142026
Opened this year
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Tip: click any highlighted corridor for details.
Why it matters Highways carry a large share of India's freight and passenger traffic, so their expansion affects trade costs, travel time, and regional growth.
- National highways: ~91,000 km (2014) → ~146,000 km (2024)
- Maharashtra has the longest network, then Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan
- Operational expressways grew from a few hundred to ~7,000 km
History
Notable projects
Flagship corridors define the era. The Delhi–Mumbai Expressway and Maharashtra's Samruddhi Mahamarg cut long-haul journeys by half or more. Under Bharatmala Phase-1 (34,800 km, ₹5.35 lakh crore), over 20,770 km had been completed by mid-2025 out of 26,425 km awarded. In rural India, the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana has built roughly 7.87 lakh km of all-weather village roads — about 95% of its sanctioned target.
How it works
Most highways are built by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) through three models: EPC (the government pays and a contractor builds), BOT (a private firm builds and recovers its cost through tolls), and the now-dominant Hybrid Annuity Model, which splits cost and risk between the two. Tolls are collected electronically via FASTag, and finished roads are increasingly bundled into investment trusts (InvITs) and leased to investors — recycling capital to fund the next round of building.
Outlook
The government has sought approval for a ₹22 lakh crore highway plan through 2031-32, and MoRTH's Vision 2047 aims to place a high-speed corridor within 100–150 km of every citizen. Once corridors are complete, average truck speeds are targeted to rise from about 47 km/h to 85 km/h, helping cut logistics costs toward 9–10% of GDP. Bharatmala Phase-2 and PMGSY-IV (62,500 km, ₹70,125 crore) extend the build into the 2030s.
The road ahead
The next steps are mostly about smoothing delivery — easing land-acquisition and clearance timelines (which pushed Bharatmala Phase-1 to 2027-28) and keeping quality high across thousands of kilometres as the network grows.
By the numbers
91,000 → 146,000+ km national highways (2014→2025). ~34 km/day construction pace, up from about 12. 7.87 lakh km rural roads under PMGSY (~95% of target). ₹5.35 lakh crore Bharatmala Phase-1 outlay. Sources: MoRTH, NHAI, NRIDA, PIB.
Source: MoRTH / NHAI — state-wise National Highway length, 2014 & 2024; in-between years interpolated. Expressway years: Wikipedia.