In his epic tome, Natural Questions, Roman philosopher Seneca observed that the universe undergoes cycles of destruction (ekpyrosis) and regeneration. Seneca’s exposition delves on profound cosmic questions of ethical and spiritual transformation. A pedantic modern-day version of Seneca’s hypothesis arrives across India every monsoon as nature exposes the complicity of apathy and corruption that drowns lives and livelihoods.
The spectacle of devastation is playing out this monsoon, too. Newer bridges are collapsing even as older ones are standing sturdy, city roads and flyovers pock-marked by potholes are competing with the lunar landscape, and newly inaugurated motorways are being gutted or washed off. The annual parade of incidents has triggered anger and outrage illustrated by memes on social media.
Consider a few headlines to appreciate the magnitude of sloth. On Wednesday, a bridge on Mahisagar river in Gujarat’s Vadodara collapsed, taking down several vehicles and 12 lives. Last month, a bridge in Pune declared dangerous by the government but used by folks collapsed killing four persons. It is not just road bridges causing worry. There are currently 9,784 railway bridges under repair. The government told parliament in April that bridges are monitored in real time using sensors. Was the Vadodara bridge monitored? An Indian Bridge Management System—tasked with assessing expiry date for bridges—has been promised and under development since 2016.
The state of new and existing highways is not dissimilar. Last year, the headlines were about impairment of the storied Atal Setu Trans-harbour Link between the mainland and Mumbai. This year, the headlines are about the state of the Rs 55,000-crore Samruddhi Mahamarg. Within weeks after a new extension between Bhiwandi and Nashik, travellers have reported major damage to the road at different points. In Rajasthan, a major portion of the just-inaugurated Baghwali-Jahaj road in Jhunjhunu district was washed away.
The old cliché of whether the road is on potholes or potholes are on the road plays out across India. A four-lane flyover connecting Dombivali with Navi Mumbai was opened to the public and closed within hours following accidents. In four weeks, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, which spends Rs 1,000 crore a year on roads, received 5,033 complaints about roads, 3,264 of them about road damage and 838 about potholes. In April, the government revealed to parliament that potholes cause over 4,000 accidents every year.
How big a problem is it? It is competitive. Last month before monsoon, the Karnataka PWD set a target of filling 3,400 potholes a day in Bengaluru. Meanwhile, the PWD in Delhi claimed to have set a ‘world record’ by filling 3,433 potholes in a day. The authorities in Bengaluru and Delhi seem to have rationalised that potholes are a part of the landscape. A minister from Madhya Pradesh underlined the horrific reality by simply stating that as long as there are roads, there will be potholes.
Destruction caused by flawed construction must be followed by reconstruction. Effectively, this is an extortionary phenomenon—spending taxpayer monies twice for the same work. Between 2021 and 2024, as per the government, over Rs 17,900 crore was spent just maintaining highways—that is roughly Rs 6,000 crore a year. And the amount is rising. In the current financial year, the government will spend Rs 9,599 crore on fixing roads.
‘Pothole budgets’ also appear in the budgets of state governments and municipal corporations. Last year, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation allocated Rs 545 crore to fix potholes; the allocation as of June this year is Rs 154 crore. In 2019, an information request revealed that the BMC had spent Rs 17,693 on each pothole. In Bengaluru, the PWD last year allocated Rs 660 crore for potholes and its municipality spent Rs7,121 crore on them between 2019 and 2022.
The consequences are manifest in human and economic cost. Take death on the roads. In the decade to 2023, over 15 lakh Indians were killed in road accidents. In 2023 alone, there were 4.80 lakh road accidents across the country claiming 1.72 lakh lives—that is, 55 accidents every hour and a death every 3 minutes. Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways, Nitin Gadkari, recently said “I try to hide my face” at international meets because India tops the list of road deaths in the world. Gadkari also revealed that road accidents cost India roughly 3 percent of GDP.
India’s taxpayers, already forking out stamp duties, income tax, road toll and GST, are forced to bear the risks. There is virtually no city in India that is free of flooding in monsoon. As this column has highlighted, this is primarily because there is a drought of action on urban planning. This week, for instance, Gurugram—once dubbed ‘Millennium City’—along with Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru were flooded for hours. Floods kept Nagpur’s buses off the roads for long. The pace of haphazard urbanisation in Pune has resulted in the city municipality listing 73 new flood-prone areas.
Public policy failures, as I wrote in my book The Gated Republic, have emerged as an alternative business model—be it water, health, education, security or power. The failures of the State impose costs on households—living in cities without pavements, marooned on flooded roads, bearing medical costs of accidents and illnesses, besides refurbishing flooded homes and basement parking spaces. The costs paid by the hapless taxpayer for mitigating these troubles verily morphs into the political economy’s annual monsoon stimulus.
Read all columns by Shankkar Aiyar
Author of The Gated Republic, Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India’s 12 Digit
Revolution, and Accidental India
(shankkar.aiyar@gmail.com)