22-05-2025
India's Car Economy Leaves the Middle Class Fuming
The American way of life in the second half of the 20th century came to be synonymous with big cars, even bigger trucks, and the sprawling freeways on which they scurry about like purposeful ants. Cheerleaders point to productivity growth and the 24 cents private industry saved for every dollar invested in the highway network; critics talk about communities gutted by asphalt and the weakening of social ties in large cities. Nearly 75 years later, the car economy — with all its promises and pitfalls — has latched on to a new host half a world away.
At 6 million-plus kilometers (4 million miles), India's road network is now the second largest in the world after the US, according to official data from New Delhi. Leave aside the vast differences in their quality 1, the most-populous nation has more than twice as many kilometers of roads per square kilometer of land as the US, a much bigger country by size. China, which has built a lot of highways but chosen highspeed trains as the focal point of transport, has a much lower density.
