By: Hosh Ram Yadav, Executive Director – Road & Highways, Rodic Consultants
If 2024 was India’s year of infrastructure scale with 37 km of highways built daily, ₹11 lakh crore budgetary allocation then 2025 was the year when scale finally met strategy. For the first time, the focus shifted from ‘how much’ to ‘how well.’ The year 2025 marked a defining phase in India’s infrastructure-led growth journey, with highways and roadways consolidating their position as one of the most visible engines of economic momentum.
Renewed activity across rail, metro, and industrial corridors, alongside sustained fiscal commitment, reaffirmed the sector’s role in driving productivity, connectivity and regional integration. Infrastructure is no longer just an enabler of growth. It has become a strategic instrument shaping India’s long term competitiveness and national development outcomes.
As of March 2025, India’s road network crossed 63 lakh kilometres, making it the second largest in the world. This scale reflects years of policy focus, enhanced budgetary allocations, and improvements in execution frameworks. National highways continue to form the backbone of freight movement and mobility. At the same time, road development is increasingly aligned with broader economic corridors, industrial clusters and urban centres. Connectivity investments are translating into measurable economic gains rather than stand alone capacity additions.
One of the most consequential shifts in 2025 was the deeper integration of digital tools and spatial intelligence into infrastructure planning and delivery. Digital maps, geospatial analytics and data driven platforms are reshaping how highways are conceived, designed, executed, operated and maintained. The integration of GIS technologies with national level frameworks such as PM Gati Shakti’s National Master Plan has enabled faster decision making, better route optimisation, improved asset lifecycle management, and reduced execution risks.
Moreover, sustainability moved decisively from intent to implementation. The infrastructural strategy placed strong emphasis on renewable energy integration, efficient utilities and climate-resilient design, acknowledging both environmental imperatives and long-term cost efficiency. Within the highways and roadways segment, this shift has led to greater adoption of green construction practices, increased use of eco-friendly and recycled materials, deployment of low-carbon technologies, and more rigorous environmental planning at the design stage.
Parallelly, urban development initiatives such as smart city programmes, metro expansions, modern utilities and housing continued to scale up. This further pushed India towards more planned and sustainable urbanisation.
The year also witnessed growing appetite for complex, multi disciplinary mega projects across transport, urban infrastructure, energy, ports and logistics. Governments and private promoters are increasingly undertaking large format projects aimed at improving connectivity, economic productivity and sustainability outcomes.
This period reflected broader regulatory evolution. Efforts to update outdated laws, improve policy clarity, enable private investment and integrate modern technology gained momentum. Sectors such as ports, energy storage and telecom benefited from more agile, investor friendly and future oriented frameworks.
From an industry perspective, 2025 reinforced the rising global competitiveness of Indian infrastructure and engineering consultancies. Strengthened by digital transformation, advanced analytics and domain expertise, Indian firms are competing confidently on global platforms. They export both technical capability and project management excellence.
However, 2025 was not without its challenges. Highway construction pace and approvals witnessed intermittent moderation, reflecting procedural bottlenecks and land-related complexities. The sector continued to grapple with time-consuming land acquisition processes, environmental clearances and regulatory approvals, leading to cost and time overruns.
Concurrently, skill shortages emerged as another critical constraint in an increasingly digitised ecosystem. Limited access to structured long-term financing, uneven adoption of modern construction technologies and governance practices, and coordination challenges across multiple agencies continued to impact execution efficiency.
These structural issues underscored the need for stronger institutional mechanisms, clearer accountability frameworks and deeper capacity building across the value chain.
Looking ahead to 2026, India stands at a decisive inflection point where ambition, sustainability and integration must converge. Sustaining momentum will require deeper investment in digital skilling, streamlined approval cycles, stronger supply-chain resilience and improved availability of long-term financing. Continued fiscal support and policy stability will remain essential, alongside greater visibility of projects across sectors through mechanisms such as the National Infrastructure Pipeline.
Equally important will be accelerating asset monetisation, creating a more dynamic and liquid PPP market, and laying out clear roadmaps for emerging infrastructure classes. Energy storage systems, including battery energy storage and pumped storage projects, slurry pipelines, data centres, green energy, energy transition infrastructure and urban infrastructure must receive focused policy and fiscal support.
As India prepares for infrastructure’s next evolution, 2025’s lessons crystallize clearly. The future belongs to ecosystems combining scale with sustainability, technology with execution discipline, ambition with institutional efficiency. The year proved that India could build infrastructure at extraordinary velocity.
The question 2026 must answer: can India build infrastructure extraordinarily well? How effectively these elements align will shape not merely highways and railways, but India’s infrastructure trajectory for the decade ahead and determine whether the country’s physical foundation matches its economic ambitions.