India's Crumbling Expressways Dent Modi's Image
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- Nitin Gadkari claimed a Dubai prince asked PM Modi to 'export' him to replicate India's highway infrastructure — a boast now going viral as the roads he championed begin failing in the monsoon.
- Delhi-Dehradun Expressway, inaugurated by Modi on April 14 at a reported cost of ~$1.258 billion, developed large potholes and cracks within three months of opening.
- Kanpur-Lucknow Expressway caved in weeks after inauguration; industrial electric fans were lined up along the freshly built road to dry waterlogged soil during government repair works.
- Pune-Mumbai Expressway Missing Link, built at ~$701.93 million, developed pothole-like patches after the first waves of monsoon rain, and the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway saw a contractor's contract terminated by NHAI for repeated failures.
- NHAI initiated proceedings to declare PNC Infratech, developer of the Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway, a non-performing contractor after 'glaring lapses' in construction quality.
- The London Times reported roughly 170 bridge collapses in India between 2021 and 2025, causing about 200 deaths, alongside repeated airport roof and underpass failures.
- The Times of India editorial 'Pothole Nation' framed the recurring craters as systemic failures rooted in corruption and poor construction oversight.
Why it matters: Modi's political brand as the 'motorway PM' rests on infrastructure delivery, and the simultaneous collapse of flagship expressways — built at hundreds of millions of dollars each — within months of inauguration gives critics a tangible corruption-and-quality narrative while Gadkari himself has gone silent in Parliament.
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