In the soft light of morning, the streets of Delhi stretch like dark ribbons of promise until a sudden jolt shatters the illusion. A two-wheeler stumbles, its rider goes out of rhythm; A sedan starts to slow to a crawl, tires screeching into a ditch; A cyclist moves forward, swearing under his breath while regaining balance. In these small moments, the grand architecture of Delhi’s mobility collapses into something far more fundamental: survival.
For all its flyovers and sweeping expressways, skylines of glass towers and its grandiose claims to modernity, Delhi has learned to live with the bottlenecks that hamper every journey. The crater has become Delhi’s most steadfast companion, surviving every season, every government and every major reform announcement.
From the muddy tracks before independence to the asphalt corridors of today, potholes are the only thing that remains constant. The city has changed size, creed and ambition; Generations have grown up from cycling in Chandni Chowk to traveling in Maruti 800 and gliding in luxury sedans and SUVs. Yet no matter the vehicle, the ride has always been bumpy. The irony is that a capital that measures its success in kilometers of motorable roads continues to stumble, its every step hampered by sores on the pavement.
Every monsoon, the ritual is repeated like clockwork. The sky opens up, drains overflow and the delicate roads of Delhi break due to the pressure. Pictures of travelers wading through streets filled with water go viral year after year. Repair campaigns are announced with refreshing optimism, and often with much fanfare. Ministers pose with shovels and cold mix, vans are sent with geotagging apps, dashboards count every filled pothole. Yet the following season, craters often return to the same locations where they filled months earlier. Even the lush green areas of Delhi’s most expensive areas – Vasant Vihar, Greater Kailash, Golf Links – have not been spared.
The existence of potholes tells a story of shortcuts hidden beneath the asphalt, of hasty decisions, of budgets being slashed, of drains being clogged, of a system that knows how to build but not how to endure.
birth of the pit
To understand the danger we have to go back to the beginning. Potholes begin as small cracks or fissures in the road, which are often invisible to the untrained eye. These emerge from massive structural distortions, hasty overlays, or foundations weakened by age or poor workmanship.
Delhi’s intense climate (especially hot summer) doesn’t help. In summer, the heat cooks the asphalt until it becomes soft and stretchy; The temperature drops in winter. Constant thermal stress exposes every fault line in road construction, promoting fracture growth.
Once a crack occurs, water starts creeping in slowly which eventually becomes the main destructive element. With each round of rain, water seeps into the cracks, slowly dissolving and peeling away the carefully compacted road beneath. What started as a thin line leads to a soft, spongy layer of weak soil beneath the solid ground. Then comes the traffic. Cars, trucks, buses – tons of weight adding to the already compromised base. Over a few days or weeks, the subsurface collapses into small pockets of muddy voids.
With little support below and constant pressure above, the top layer of the road eventually gives up. A bulge appears, then a depression, and gradually that depression grows teeth, turning into the jagged mouth of a crater – a familiar sight to every traveler throughout India.
An engineer working with the Delhi government’s Public Works Department (PWD) said, explaining the habitual recurrence of this problem in the city, “Most of the roads you see are often re-built very quickly. We fix the surface but the foundation remains weak. Whenever it rains, water finds these small cracks and starts the process leading to the formation of potholes. It’s a cycle and we are usually ready to work on these potholes again.” Live.”
He explained in detail the structure of road construction: a subgrade, a sub-base, a base course, a binder layer and finally the bitumen surface. Weakness at any stage, compromise in material or compaction, can make an otherwise durable road fragile. He pointed out that these issues are compounded by factors Delhi knows intimately – haste, cost-cutting and waterlogging.
“Hastily applied cold mix does not easily bond with the road, especially when the base is also affected by waterlogging. Blocked drains keep the suburb moist and heavy vehicles accelerate the deterioration causing these potholes to recur,” said the PWD engineer quoted above, who did not wish to be identified.
governance puzzle
But beneath the chemistry of asphalt and the physics of stress, there is another issue that is not uncommon for people to grapple with – bureaucracy. Delhi’s roads – from wide, multi-lane expressways, to important arterial roads like the Ring Road, to narrow neighborhood streets – come under the control of at least seven agencies, each with its own mandate and budget.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) owns approximately 12,704 lane kilometres; PWD has 1,400; The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) manages 1,298; Delhi State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (DSIIDC) 2,285; Delhi Development Authority (DDA) 435; Government Department of Irrigation and Flood Control (I&FC) 297; And the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has about 40.
Fragmented responsibility ensures that accountability dissolves like mud under bitumen. Tenders do not reward the most qualified bidder, but the lowest bidder. The result was a patchwork repair that brought together a city that ultimately became a temporary bandage on decades-old wounds.
“Potholes are not some supernatural thing that magically appear. If the work is done with accountability and use of proper materials, there is no way potholes will appear. The problem is that our country has now become addicted to a huge scam of L1 licensing or tendering, which allows the lowest bidder to get the tender and build the road. Therefore, cost cutting is given priority over the quality of work, expertise and knowledge,” Rahgiri Foundation. said Sarika Panda Bhatt, trustee of , a non-profit trust that focuses on the public to improve urban mobility. Health, road safety and inclusive infrastructure.
Beyond governance, there is the quiet moral cost, which is difficult to assess yet deeply felt. Having to deal with potholes on a daily basis is a small blow to citizens’ trust in the state.
“When thousands of citizens move through a city expecting infrastructure and face potholes again and again, it is not just an inconvenience – it is an everyday erosion of aspiration,” said PS Uttarwar, former additional commissioner of DDA. “Each broken road is a message that the promise of the state can be ignored with impunity. It says that your dignity, your time, your safety can be compromised.”
“Expecting better roads is not elitism, but a basic social contract. When that contract is repeatedly and predictably violated, the aspirations of millions of people are slowly being killed by a bureaucracy and administration that prefer spectacle rather than sustained care. The damage is cumulative for all sections of society. Poor neighborhoods feel it first, but when posh enclaves also begin to bear the same scars, the betrayal is too great to ignore.” becomes impossible,” said Mehta, associate director, urban development, WRI India.
The common man had to bear the brunt of this
Despite all the symbols of neglect, potholes also cause a more measurable pain: the bills they generate. For many families, the sudden plunge into the ditch means lost wages.
“Potholes can wreak havoc on vehicles, from rims to suspension and alignment, nothing is spared. The engine may stall, the suspension may fail, or shock absorbers may bend. Engine repairs alone can be costly 6,000, while fixing a suspension may cost you At least Rs 2,000,” said Kaleem Khan, mechanic and vintage car restorer.
When a car hits a pothole at high speed, the damage can be staggering: bent shock absorbers, broken suspension arms, ruptured chambers due to oil leakage, broken link rods. SUVs with heavier frames often suffer more damage – from 6,000 Minimum Rs 10,000.
“As far as two-wheelers are concerned, even a blow from a pothole can bend the rim or damage the shock absorber,” Khan said.
The cumulative financial burden is staggering. Vehicle owners in Chandigarh have to pay the price of potholes, a study by Punjab Engineering College has revealed 500 crores annually – a city much smaller than Delhi, with far fewer cars.
The human toll is equally serious. According to a 2023 report by the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), potholes took the lives of 2,161 people in the year – a 16.4% increase from the previous year. In cities with more than one million inhabitants, potholes cause about 1.6% of road accidents and 1.8% of road accident deaths. In Delhi alone, road features including winding roads, construction areas and potholes were responsible for a staggering 130 deaths in 2023.
looking for solutions
Meanwhile, short-term repair campaigns fuel the political appetite for visible action. But long-term structural reconstruction requires budgetary patience, rigorous oversight, and a willingness to confront vested interests and corruption.
Innovations are being experimented there. For example, the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) has developed an eco-friendly cold mix called Ecofix that can repair potholes within minutes even on wet roads. The technology has been successfully tested, yet its use remains sporadic. NHAI has tested so-called “self-healing” roads using asphalt laced with steel fibers and epoxy capsules, which can repair small cracks and prevent water infiltration.
“Engineers know the solutions. What they cannot always force is the institutional will. Maintenance is often a political and financial decision not to encourage quick fixes. The cost of poor quality work should be visible through penalties, blacklisting and public audits. If this is not done, potholes will keep coming up again. This is true for all infrastructure work,” said S Velmurugan, principal scientist and head of the traffic engineering and safety division at CRRI. Said.
Earlier this year, the Delhi government had announced with much fanfare that it had repaired over 3,400 potholes in a single day. The dashboards were glowing green. Social media praised this achievement. But within a few months the potholes were back – proof that Delhi has no shortage of technology, money or expertise. There is a lack of continuity of care.
A former DDA official said, “Pilot projects are successful but scaling them up threatens the robust system. There is comfort in the status quo. The pothole keeps everyone busy and employed. The pothole is also an economic opportunity. Everyone gets a cut.”
the way forward
But closer to reality, roads in many parts of Delhi look like battlefields – patched, bruised, permanent. A city that once dreamed of becoming world-class is still limping on wounded streets, carrying both ambition and indifference on its back.
In the lull between bumps and breaks, one realizes the truth: A city is judged not by how fast it builds, but by how well it holds together.
And Delhi, for all its promises, is still learning how to move forward.
