Article (Architectural Review, May 2022) by Nitin Bathla that documents India’s rapid highway expansion since the 2000s and especially under the 2014–2021 governments. It situates a November 2021 publicity landing by PM Narendra Modi on a newly built six-lane motorway as emblematic of a broader ‘highway revolution’ driven by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and programmes such as Bharatmala, which aim to create corridors of petro-urbanism. The piece links high-speed road building to rising vehicle markets, petroleum taxes as financing, land commodification, and political contestation (notably large farmers’ protests and highway occupations).
Questions this document answers
16 November 2021
12 km per day
84 km per day
Over 12,000 kilometres
22 airstrips