Roads, Highways and Bridges

Class 7 Social Science · Chapter 19: Infrastructure: Engine of India's Development · NCERT Exploring Society: India and Beyond section 19.2

Learn

India has the world's second-largest road network (2024), after the USA. Local roads take children to school and ambulances to hospitals. State highways, built by state public works departments, link towns and districts. National highways and expressways, built by the central government, join cities across states and connect to stations, airports and ports. India's national highways total about 1,50,000 km; NH44, the longest at 4,112 km, runs from Srinagar to Kanyakumari, and the Golden Quadrilateral links Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.

Where forests, wide rivers or steep mountains block roads, bridges and tunnels help. The 9.15 km Dhola Sadiya Bridge across the Lohit River links Assam and Arunachal Pradesh; ferries used to stop in floods, but now travel is year-round and four hours shorter, so fruit reaches market before it spoils and patients reach hospitals in time. In Meghalaya, Khasi and Jaintia communities grow living root bridges by guiding the roots of rubber trees across streams with bamboo; they take decades to form, last centuries and connect generations as well as villages.

Explore: who builds this road?

1. Sort each road.

Remember

• India has the second-largest road network; NH44 is the longest highway.
• Bridges like Dhola Sadiya and living root bridges connect difficult terrain.

Quick check

Which network links Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata?

1. the Golden Quadrilateral
2. NH44 only
3. the Konkan Railway
4. the Dhola Sadiya Bridge

Think about it

What can living root bridges teach modern engineers?

Practice

Practise with fresh questions at three levels (easy, medium, hard), some answered hands-on, with hints and worked answers. Get 4 of your last 5 right to finish the topic.