Highways for the Nation, Not Highways for the Nexus

India’s Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) has delivered record kilometres of roadways, marquee expressways, and ambitious monetisation plans. But beneath the concrete lies a troubling pattern: spiralling costs, brittle quality, opaque asset sales, and contractors who also double as political donors.


“Highways must carry trust, not just traffic.”


Take costs: the Dwarka Expressway’s per-kilometre bill shot up more than tenfold compared with approvals. Then quality: fresh stretches crumbling within months, followed by blacklists after disaster strikes. Punishment after collapse is theatre, not accountability.


Monetisation, too, raises questions. Without published valuation models, citizens cannot know if public toll revenues are being sold too cheaply. And the electoral-bonds disclosures revealed that highway contractors were also among the ruling party’s top donors—a structural conflict, whether or not quid-pro-quo can be proven.


Capacity without credibility is a dead end. India has shown it can build fast. Now it must build fairly—with transparency, independent audits, clean political finance, and honest disclosures.


Highways are not just about asphalt and steel—they are about trust.


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