India opens first stage of $13bn Delhi to Mumbai expressway

 Route linking two cities is part of concerted infrastructure push to catch up with geopolitical rival China

Section of the new expressway that will connect Delhi with Mumbai.

India has inaugurated the first stage of its longest expressway, a route linking Delhi and Mumbai, as it makes a concerted infrastructure push to catch up with its geopolitical rival China.

The $13bn (£10.8bn) project will eventually cut the road travel time between the country’s two biggest cities in half, to 12 hours.

India is the world’s fastest-growing major economy and will soon be recognised as its most populous country, but its infrastructure remains decades behind that of its northern neighbour.

A sign over one of the new four-lane carriageways proclaimed “Welcome to Delhi-Vadodara-Mumbai expressway” – a route that spans 1,386km (861 miles).

The prime minister, Narendra Modi, opened the 246km first stage on Sunday, linking the capital with the tourist city of Jaipur in Rajasthan. He said it was a “sign of developing India”, adding that “such investments in railways, highways, subway lines and airports are a key to pushing the country’s growth rate, attracting more investments and creating fresh jobs”.

Asia’s third largest economy has made a renewed push to decouple itself from an increasingly assertive China’s supply chains and build up its economic capacity since a deadly military clash on their Ladakh frontier in 2020.

A wary New Delhi has expedited many key projects, and this month Modi’s government announced an unprecedented 33% increase in infrastructure spending. Modi is expected to open at least a dozen major railways, highways, expressways and port projects in the next few months

India has one of the world’s largest rail networks, employing 1.3 million people, but it is badly outdated and needs huge investment in track and rolling stock, with authorities seeking to tap private capital to do so.

For its part, Beijing has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure over many years and China now boasts an extensive motorway system, gleaming airports and by far the world’s largest high-speed rail network.

India’s first high-speed rail line, a $13bn Japanese-funded project linking Mumbai and Ahmedabad, remains under construction and has been hit by land acquisition and other bureaucratic bottlenecks.

Harsh V Pant, a professor at King’s College London, said that with China “losing some of its lustre”, Indian policymakers “feel that it is in a geopolitical and geoeconomic sweet spot which needs to be leveraged with higher infrastructure investments to make it an even more lucrative and attractive economy”.

He added: “China’s economic growth and infrastructure development started a few decades before [India’s] so there is still a lot that it needs to do in terms of matching up to China.”