Roads are the dominant mode of transportation in India today. The country has the world's second largest road network, aggregating over 33 Lakh kilometers (km). This 34 lakh km of roads length represents 200 km of expressways, 70,548 km of national highways, 1,31,899 km of state highways, 4,67, 763 km of major district roads and 26,50,000 km of rural and other roads. These roads carry almost 85% of the country’s passenger traffic and 70% of its freight. The density of India’s highway network -- at 0.66 km of highway per square kilometer of land – is similar to that of the United States (0.65) and much greater than China's (0.16) or Brazil's (0.20). However, most highways in India are narrow and congested with poor surface quality, and 40 percent of India’s villages do not have access to all-weather roads.

To achieve the objective of 8-10% of GDP growth every year, India needs to strengthen and focus on building its infrastructure and especially on roads and highways.

To achieve this India in its 11th Five-Year Plan has chalked up an outlay of US $500bn for the infrastructure sector of which the Road Sector accounts for almost 14-15% where engineering, design and technological services are sure to come into focus because of the demand –supply gap given the rapid growth of the international construction projects and their integration into the mainline transportation network. The ministry of Road transport and highways under the leadership of Shri Kamal Nath has created a road map for the next five years to build 20 km of roads per day leading to 7000 km in a year or 36,500 km in the next five years. This entire project is going to cost the nation around US$ 100 billion approx. The total turnover of the Indian infrastructure industry stands at US$ 20 billion only with top 15 companies contributing 80% of this industry. If we want to execute the projects worth US$ 100 billion then we need 20 companies of the size of L&T to take on these projects, adequate trained manpower, road construction equipment, much needed finance and the most important the policy framework and guideline which facilitates to achieve this target.

ASAPP Media Information Group has initiated a series of India Roads conferences, the first of which was conducted at Delhi on September 25th, 2009. The second conference in the series is being organised at Hyderabad which will facilitate to create a platform for construction industry leaders, senior officials academicians and researchers, user organizations, decision makers from government to come and interact, share their experiences and provide expertise to overcome the technological challenges faced by the Infrastructure sector.