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India's Golden Quadrilateral
In the 1990s India's prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee famously said, "Our roads don't have a few potholes. Our potholes have a few roads." Since then, India's highways have come a long way.
Unveiled a decade ago, the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) is part of a $30-billion-plus National Highways Authority of India project. Construction officially began in 2000, and since then, the GQ has grown to 3,633 miles (5,846 kilometers) of highway that link four of the country's major cities—Delhi, Kolkata (Calcutta), Mumbai (Bombay), and Chennai—in the shape of a diamond.
Though the GQ makes up less than 2 percent of India's road network, it carries about 40 percent of the country's traffic and accounts for one-third of its traffic fatalities. Nevertheless, according to Sanjay Agrawal of the National Highways Authority, the "GQ can be considered as the best stretch among national highways"—safer than the two-lane alternatives.
Engineers hope to eventually have an automatic toll system as well as road sensors that, if the ground ruptures, will immediately alert maintenance crews to the need for repairs. That would surely reassure drivers, many of whom ask Hindu priests to bless their vehicles and motor scooters before hitting the open road.
But reaction to the road construction has been mixed. Many rural towns have been cut in half by the new highways, and pedestrians crossing the road risk injury and cause accidents. Moreover, auto rickshaws, sacred cows, and other animal traffic, including holy men riding elephants en route to temple pilgrimages, have the right of way on the GQ.
The danger doesn't end there. To save gas, many people drive slower than the posted 50-mile-an-hour speed limit. Mobs often form after accidents and threaten the offending drivers. And truckers often stay awake by drinking doda, a tealike mixture of opium and betelnut that may keep them awake but also impairs their judgment.
