India opens first stage of Delhi-Mumbai expressway
$13b project will eventually cut travel time between two biggest cities to 12 hours
New Delhi: India on Sunday inaugurated the first stage of its longest expressway, a route linking New Delhi and Mumbai, as it makes a concerted infrastructure push to catch up with geopolitical rival China.
The ambitious $13 billion project will eventually cut the road travel time between the country’s two biggest cities in half, to 12 hours.
India is the world’s fastest-growing major economy and will soon be recognised as its most populous country.
A sign over one of the new four-lane carriageways proclaimed “Welcome to Delhi-Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway” - a route that spans a total of 1,386 kilometres.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the 246-kilometre first stage Sunday, linking the capital with the tourist city of Jaipur in Rajasthan.
It was a “sign of developing India”, he said, adding that “such investments in railways, highways, subway lines and airports are a key to pushing the country’s growth rate, attracting more investments and creating fresh jobs”.
“When modern roads, railway stations, metro, and airports are built, the country’s progress gains momentum. Investment in infrastructure attracts even more investment. For the last 9 years, the central government is also continuously making huge investments in infrastructure,” the Prime Minister said.
Highlighting that the Centre has made investments in infrastructure in the last nine years, Modi said that the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway and the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor are going to become two strong pillars of progress for Rajasthan and the country.
Asia’s third-largest economy has made a renewed push to decouple itself from an increasingly assertive China’s supply chains and build up its own economic capacity since a deadly military clash on their Ladakh frontier in 2020.
A wary New Delhi has expedited many key projects, and the government this month announced an unprecedented 33 percent increase in infrastructure spending.
The Indian premier is expected to open at least a dozen major railways, highways, expressways and port projects in the next few months.
‘Geopolitical sweet spot’
India has one of the world’s largest rail networks - employing 1.3 million people - but it is badly outdated and needs huge investments in both track and rolling stock, with authorities seeking to tap private capital to do so.
India’s first high-speed rail line, a $13 billion Japanese-funded project linking Mumbai and Ahmedabad, remains under construction and has been hit by land acquisition and other bureaucratic bottlenecks.
Harsh V. Pant, a professor with King’s College London, told AFP that with China “losing some of its lustre”, Indian policymakers “feel that it is in a geopolitical and geoeconomic sweet spot which needs to be leveraged with higher infrastructure investments to make it an even more lucrative and attractive economy”.
He added: “China’s economic growth and infrastructure development started a few decades before [India’s] so there is still a lot that it needs to do in terms of matching up to China.”
According to officials, the 246 km long Delhi-Dausa-Lalsot section of the Delhi Mumbai Expressway has been developed at a cost of more than Rs 121 billion.
The opening of this section will reduce the travel time from Delhi to Jaipur from 5 hours to around 3.5 hours and provide a major boost to the economic development of the entire region.
The Expressway will pass through six states of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra and connect major cities like Kota, Indore, Jaipur, Bhopal, Vadodara and Surat.
The Expressway will also serve 93 PM Gati Shakti Economic Nodes, 13 ports, 8 major airports and 8 multi-modal logistics parks (MMLPs) along with spurs to new upcoming greenfield airports such as Jewar Airport, Navi Mumbai Airport and JNPT port.
“Prime Minister’s emphasis on the building of excellent road infrastructure as an engine of growth, development and connectivity in New India, is being realised by the construction of a number of ongoing world-class Expressways across the country,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said earlier in a statement.
“Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is one such project and its first completed section, Delhi-Dausa-Lalsot, will be dedicated to the nation by the Prime Minister,” the PMO said.