HOW NHAI PLANS TO DODGE A DEBT TRAP

India's premier highway construction body is in a race against time to monetize its assets and pare its debt

- Sumant Banerji

The winding course of the new expressway between Bengaluru and Mysuru, 119km long, has 11 overpasses, 64 underpasses, five bypasses and 42 small bridges. It took five years to build and cost ₹8,480 crore.

When it was inaugurated on 12 March, a lot of the social media chatter was about its scale and impact-it cut down travel time between the two cities to just 75 minutes, from over three hours earlier.

A couple of months later, the buzz on social media changed course-those using the highway grew increasingly critical.

From 1 June, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), the central authority that develops, maintains and manages the national highways, quietly revised the toll rates. A one-way journey by car on the expressway was revised to ₹165 from ₹135 earlier; the return journey to ₹250 from ₹205 earlier. That's a hike of 22%, much higher than the annual 7% toll fee hike that NHAI had implemented in expressways across the country in 2023.

Two months later, on 1 August, the toll rates went up again as a second toll plaza was made operational at Maddur, a town 60km from Mysuru. For a one-way journey, commuters now pay 320; the return journey costs 485. At 2.69 per km, the expressway is now one of the most expensive stretches in the country.

"We pay road cess, besides all the other taxes that the government collects. Then they build a highway and charge high toll rates which keeps going up every year," said Anand Iyer who uses the expressway daily. He works in the industrial belt of Bidadi, on the outskirts of Bengaluru.