With a growing economy such as India’s, more citizens become active consumers. Automobiles are on a fast uptick in sales here which presents a bit of a problem for this Infrastructure hungry country. Beyond the superhighways emerging between the largest of India’s cities, the smaller rural roads now support a vast amount of traffic not seen before. In the villages it’s still quite common to pass by tractors, tuk tuk’s, pedestrians, various animals and more. A vegetable cart moving from one village to another supplying fresh produce to villagers that depend on daily deliveries hugs the shoulder of a single lane road as a herd of goats passes in the opposite direction. Two centuries of transportation inhabit the roads of India.

When showing my pictures after arriving from one of my India trips, someone always asks me how the roads are. We’ve been preconditioned to believe that India is yet a 3rd world country with only footpaths to connect us from Point A to Point B. Although I know differently, it’s hard to explain how good the road conditions actually are when my pictures often show potholed and crumbling examples.

So when I encountered road paving projects on the lone roads connecting villages to larger towns during my last journey, the camera had to come out. Although the actual process of laying the asphalt is fairly similar to the US standard, the volume of traffic and the Indian culture keeps road workers from completing the job thoroughly. Here in the US, we’ll divert traffic to one lane as the asphalt is laid on the opposite lane. Plenty of time is given to the smoothing and drying of the fresh ingredients. In India, drivers are an impatient lot. A road block due to repaving invites a flood of horn honking followed by drivers jockeying for the best position in line. If this means pulling out of line and passing all the way to the end, thus causing a traffic jam at the front of the line, so be it. Indians are not very keen on lines and certainly not when it comes to being forced to wait in them.

Smoothing of fresh asphalt done by hand

At the front of the line you’ve got one road worker wearing nothing more than everyday casual clothes. Don’t expect to see any bright orange gear with reflective strips here. He’s most likely holding up a torn white strip of fabric tied to a stick alerting drivers of the block ahead. Behind him is the road crew.

Initially one lane of traffic builds waiting to pass, but over a few minutes the impatient drivers cut line and create two or three lanes of traffic which have no choice but to filter back to one lane when the block clears. The asphalt laying machine spans about the width of an average country road so the drivers fight and scramble to reform a single path.

Now comes the odd part to me…as soon as the asphalt is laid and smooth, the road is reopened to all traffic. In fact, if a car can somehow manage through the line, past the tar barrels keeping the asphalt hot, the road machines and road crew, that driver will zoom past the block and down the freshly paved road. Rakesh, my driver, did just this one day. As we screamed past the road crew, fresh asphalt kicked up onto the car and undercarriage for miles creating a violent symphony under the floorboards. Hot tarred rocks were kicked up from the tires and thrown onto the car’s body hitting the windows at times. Two huge ruts from the tires showed our path as I looked back to see what damage he was causing. But it wasn’t just us. Once we had broken past the road crew we had given permission to the rest of the line to follow. Now you have cars and heavy trucks mangling the work meant to enhance the road conditions. My mind was calculating how much money was wasted with this unorganized, hap-hazard project.

This is where old India meets new India. An antiquated infrastructure must be maintained, repaired, updated and expanded as the days of buses, motorbikes and pedestrians gives way to larger buses, over-sized trucks and lots & lots of cars.