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How Indian Highways are Numbered (New NH Numbering System)?

(Just in case you are not aware of) the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways had taken the initiative of re-numbering most of the highways in India a couple of years ago. It was a minor news item in most dailies then but I thought it’s a huge step towards rationalizing our road network names along with rebuilding the infrastructure. The National road grid in India has been getting a good boost ever since our former Prime Minister Shri. Atal Behari Vajpayee’s National highway development project (NHD) started materializing in stages.

Highway System in India

India at present (Feb 2013) has more than 200 national highways totaling to a length of 70,000+ kilometers which is maintained by the NHAI (National Highway Authority of India)

The primary highway grid, as per Vajpayee’s dream project, consists of the following major stretches (picture below) supported by existing highways significantly enhanced:

The North-South Corridor stretches from Srinagar in J&K state to Kanyakumari – the southernmost tip of India. The length of this major road is 4000kms.

The East-West Corridor connects Porbandar in Gujarat with Silchar in Assam and the total length of this road being 3300kms. (Wonder why they didn’t plan it till the boarder including Arunachal Pradesh!)

The Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) is the highway network connecting the four metros in India – i.e. Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. The spin-offs of GQ also connects cities like Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad. The total length of GQ is 5846kms.

Most part of the above highways is 4-lanes while 6-laning project is being undertaken in many stretches.

Please note that the North-South and East-West corridors are often referred as ONE i.e. NS-EW corridor

north-south east west corridors
North-South and East-West Corridors

golden quadrilateral India
The Golden Quadrilateral

(Image courtesy: Wikipedia – The boundaries shown here may not be the actual boundaries of India)

Highway Types in India

If you refer to Google map for driving, you must have noticed symbols like AH, NH and SH. The following are the explanations for these respective codes.

1. National Highways (NH): These are major highways in India that provide connectivity to all cities and states. NHs are maintained by the Government of India (i.e. NHAI). As I mentioned earlier, National highways spans over 70,000 kms and even the NS-EW corridor and GQ are formed by many such highways.

2. State Highways (SH): State highways spans over 150,000kms in length and are managed by the state governments to provide accessibility and city/town inter-connectivity within each state.

3. Great Asian Highways (AH): Asian Highways are part of the cooperative project within Asian countries. While in principle, the National Highways in India themselves forms the AH stretch in India, it’s good to understand them from the map’s point of view. You will encounter many places in a map where the highway is referred to as an Asian Highway or AH. In reality though, there’s no separate road network for AHs but they consume the respective major highways in the participating countries to form the Asian Highway grid. You can read more about Asian Highways at Wikipedia.

How the New Highway Numbering in India Works?

Let us come to our main topic now. Until recently, the Indian highways were numbered in a very confusing manner that didn’t provide any logic behind their numbers. However, the Government of India took a major decision in 2010 to rationalize the highway numbers in a way that the number provides some clue about the geographic location and the direction of a particular highway.

Please refer to this circular by DORTH to know all the renumbering that took place.

The logic behind national highway numbering in India is as follows:

  1. All North-South highways will carry EVEN number
  2. All East-West highways will have ODD numbers
  3. All major Highways will be single digit or double digit in number (Read the exception in point 6 below)
  4. North-South highways will increase their numbers from East to West. For example, a particular North-South highway in Central India or Western India will have a higher number than the one in East India. To be specific, now you can guess that NH4 is somewhere in East India where as highway 44 may be towards the west of India while both runs north-south due to the even numbering
  5. Similarly East-West highways will increase their numbers as we move from North to South. By this logic NH1 will be running East-West somewhere in North India while NH 83 may be somewhere down south. Of course, there may be a minor confusion among some roads that may be running diagonally in stretches
  6. THREE digit numbered highways are secondary routes or branches of a main highway. For example, 144, 244, 344 etc will be the branches of the main National highway 44. Please note that since NH44 (NS Corridor) runs the length of the country from North to South a side shoot say 144 may be up north while something like 944 may be down south
  7. Suffixes A, B, C, D etc are added to the three digit sub highways to indicate very small spin-offs or stretches of sub-highways. For example, 966A, 527B etc

So next time when you are driving based on the map or navigation device and when you see/hear something like ‘Turn left to Old NH47’ you should remember that the particular highway is being re-numbered.

I am not sure when the numbering process will be complete but I sincerely hope that they introduce a lot of sign boards to avert any confusion. Also, like in the US and some western countries, it may help if they provide some clue about which direction one is heading at any given moment. For example, 35W means a west bound highway. In India, since the major number (e.g. 35) corresponds to the direction itself, what the road signs or milestones should carry is something like 35-W or 35-E, I think.

Picture References

Wikipedia has a nice picture showing all the re-numbered highways. Please refer to this image link.

For a magnified view of the National highway map in India, please refer to this link.

‘Highways for Life’ is indeed the punch line for India as well.

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Symptoms of an Indian just Returned from the US

Enough has been said about the US returned Indians’ behavior and their attitude in the mother land. Before I start my version of US Indians joke, let me make a few things very clear:

  • I have myself stayed in the US for a few years and hence a few statements below may be autobiographical (which I didn’t probably understand then)
  • I am not trying to tar everyone with the same brush – people may differ
  • I still have a good number friends and relatives in the US of A and I do not intent to hurt any of them with my post – it’s just meant for plain humor alone

So you have heard and read many stories of Indians about their sudden US accent, usage of miles instead of kilometers, mineral water drinking habits, calorie concerns and diet coke drinking habits etc. Hopefully what I am going to share is somewhat different stories.

Symptom #1: In the US…

Well, for a US returned Indian, invariably almost all topics of discussion should start with ‘In the US…’ or ‘In US…’. Believe me, this symptom fails to disappear even years after them coming back to India. Even worse, those people who have stayed hardly three or more months in the United States will still say this.

By the way, while ‘In the US’ is the statement most heard, you still can’t rule out ‘In Australia’, ‘In UK’, ‘In XYZ developed country’ etc…

Symptom #2: Can I talk to your Manager?

Well, the US returned Indian has a different expectation about the service quality that he needs to get. Hence when he doesn’t see any instant result while talking to a customer support or sales personnel, his rude question after a minute of talking is ‘Can I talk to your Manager?’ (as if that improves the situation dramatically in Indian conditions… May be it’s more of a way of suggesting ‘I am superior to you, so treat me better’)

Symptom #3: Meet-all-Friends-Syndrome

So he returns from the US either for a short visit or for good. Suddenly he becomes a very friendly person and makes it a point to meet all his friends (whom he has forgotten since long during the good old days and wouldn’t even ‘like’ them on Facebook then). The get-togethers usually happen in groups in high end restaurants or theme parks so that the vacation is spent fruitfully with friends as part of a busy schedule to get rid of boredom. As a matter of fact, during their 3 or 4 weeks visit, friends are allocated 90% of the time and the old parents and relatives should be happy to get an appointment slot of few hours with their wards.

Symptom #4: Restaurant bill payment and Tips

While the bills used to be picked by them prior to the recession, these days the restaurant bills are promptly shared by the guests as well as the elite host. Times have changed, you know. Invitations have now changed to Meetings.

However, every amount by default in calculated in US Dollars. This will very quickly happen in mind and one can hear statements like ‘That’s less than half a dollar, it’s very cheap’ or ‘Man, that’s more than a 100 dollars, that’s as expensive as it’s THERE’.

While every possible calculation is in USD, the restaurant waiter tip is an exception here. The waiter still gets a tip of max 10 rupees regardless of the order size and service quality while ‘In the US we pay 10% to 15% as tip’.

Symptom #5: Focus on Sales, Deals and Coupons

While talking about his latest car, gadget that he got from BestBuy or the recent home purchase, he will promptly say ‘I got a good DEAL on that’ there. Getting a deal is a pride factor, you see regardless of how much you spent.

Note: Not to forget that some of them – especially the ones from a particular southern state in India – actually return those things (that they got on deal, heavily showed off and used in India) as soon as they go back to the US. The no-questions-asked-return-policy in some US stores is best exploited by Indians, I think

Symptom #6: Manual Transmission Phobia

Non-stopping whining about the pollution levels and bad traffic conditions in India is a must. And even if he’s in a hired taxi, he will still worry about the ‘manual transmission’ car. If the friends are driving, he will amaze how exactly this thing works (and probably that’s the only Indian skill that he ever admires secretly)

Needless to remind you, ‘In US, everything is automatic’.

So, what doesn’t change?

Despite all those changes, there are certain things that never change (of course, other than the restaurant tip norms).

During the Indian visit, though he often complains that ‘the food is very spicy’, he will still pack back as much Indian spices and curry powders as possible when he goes back.

Formal shirts and shoes are always purchased in bulk from India because they are expensive there while casuals and accessories can be bought ‘ there on sale’

Over-courteous behavior (‘opening the door for people’, ‘after you’, ‘excuse me’) is something that is usually present in the US alone. You can see traces of it during the first few days of Indian stay and then ‘Indianism’ takes over. However, when they go back there’s a sudden positive switch.

And by the way, these days some of them have actually stopped drinking coke with Indian meals. Things are changing…

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What Indian Politicians Said About Obama’s Win?

So what were the Indian politicians’ reactions after Obama’s won the Presidential elections for second time?

(Please note that these are fake remarks intended for humour alone and hence readers are requested not to get offended by the same)

Indian politicians about Obama

Digvijay Singh

I have solid evidence that Obama took huge sum of money from anti-social elements in order to drive his election campaigns not only this year but in 2008 as well. And the US presidents should not involve their families in political matters and election campaigns (they should instead create political heirs like Indian political parties do)

P Chidambaram

Statistically speaking, although Obama won, there might have been a percentage of technical error that affected the final outcome for Mitt Romney. We intend to fix this over the next 40 years, via stringent measures and policy creations without which the GDP growth of 0.0001 percent cannot be achieved nor can inflation be brought down under 20%.

Mamata Banerjee

Obomo treat Bongol like step sohn. This is not occeptoble and all his peepal are CPI(M) cadres, Maoist cadres…. The real ‘Poriborthan’ is what we need just like we are doing in Bongol.

Arun Jaitley

The voters are entrusted the Obama yet again just like the aam admi did it for UPA in 2009. I am sure they will regret the mandate given by them sooner or later. I believe that the Republicans will form a very supportive opposition (just like we are doing) to take the country to the next level. At BJP, we believe that they have a bigger role to play (to make sure that the house is disrupted in every single session) in this context.

Sitaram Yechury

We will not let Obama take up any development activities in the US – especially anything that affects the common man. Our Polit bureau is closely watching the developments and we intend to come up with our white paper soon. As for Mitt Romney, he’s no saint either. We hope to see a Chinese immigrant or genuine Socialist Russian leader leading the United States soon. (As for us, we will not let anyone rule, we don’t want to rule either, we are just genuine activists concerned about all types of development activities)

Bal Thackeray

Obama won just because of the immigrants who are causing trouble all over the nation. If the US president dares to visit in India again, I warn that Shiv Sainiks will spoil all cricket pitches in India.

Devegowda

Mitt Romney lost because he did nothing for the farmers. Only those who support farmers will be supported by our party (so that we can acquire as many farm lands and farm houses as possible). I hope to see Obama taking up more farmer friendly policies (such as making Ragi Muddhe available in the White House Canteen)

Nitish Bharadwaj

We will fight till Obama gives special economic status to Bihar. However, I will not accept the economic package if Modi is teaming up with Obama.

Narendra Modi

Have you seen his Billion Dollar bailout girl friend err… wife? She did the trick for him. (Obama: If you don’t like billion dollar girlfriend, why don’t you tell us more about your simple school teacher village wife)

Yeddyurappa

This is all black magic. Obama did black magic with the help of two famous Californian and Iowan black magicians. On top of this, he also visited 100 Hindu temples in 10 days and got the job done by bribing gods. I had advised Romney to visit at least 200 temples but he didn’t listen to me, fearing me to snatch power. See what happened now?

Kejriwal

Obama must RESIGN first and face election again. Mitt Romney is no saint either and he should RESIGN as well. And if there are any other contender out there, he is corrupt and they should all resign. Resign! Resign!! Resign!!!

…and…

Manmohan Singh

Mmm… Grin… Sigh… (Gets up, looks at the match referee Soniaji for approval and hesitantly waves at Obama like a Cricket umpire feebly signaling a boundary hit by ‘The Sachin’)