Streets of India

Pierre Virot – Rajastan Government. India/K.L. Kamat, India

Photos : Pierre Virot, Photographer of the World Health Organization HQ in Geneva

We take roads for granted. But only when you have to cut through a jungle or wade through water do you realize the beauty of a well laid out road, stretching itself out before you.

The ‘thread that binds the nation together’. This is truly a deserving metaphor for a road network that is one of the largest in the world. Its grand system of national highways, state highways and the roads that run endlessly within cities. Even the little by-lanes which is most metros have become parking space! The statistics are impressive: about 34,608 km of national highways, 128,622 km of state highways, and an informal network of about 2,737,080 km, the total exceeding 3.01 million kilometres. Looking at these numbers one would almost think the whole country is paved and ready to be driven on!

India’s streets are truly a melting pot of her culture. Indians take to streets on all important festive occasions, whether they are celebrating a wed- ding, a victory, or a religious event. For a large number of poor Indians, indeed, the streets are the stage where the drama of their entire life unfolds.

The volume and wide mixture of vehicles and people on the roads in India make road safety a major challenge. With 80,000 deaths a year and perhaps ten or twelve times this number of people requiring hospital care, the health and social problem of road traffic injury is large - it is estimated to cost around 1% of GNP. The problem is also growing. The World Bank predicts growth of traffic injury in South Asia of about 150% in the twenty years to 2020. The World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention (released on 7 April) is a joint effort by WHO and The World Bank to address this issue.