Anatomy of a pothole: What lies under the cracks

For all its flyovers and expressways, skyline of glass towers and claim to modernity, Delhi has learnt to live with interruptions that punctuate every journey.

In the soft morning light, Delhi’s roads stretch like dark ribbons of promise until a sudden jolt breaks the illusion. A two-wheeler stumbles, its rider thrown off rhythm; a sedan slows to a crawl, tyres dipping into a crater with a crunching thud; a cyclist swerves, cursing under his breath as he regains balance. In these small moments, Delhi’s grand architecture of mobility collapses into something far more primal: survival.

A damaged stretch at Vikas Marg near ITO bridge. (RAJ K RAJ /HT PHOTO)

For all its flyovers and sweeping expressways, its skyline of glass towers and its larger claim to modernity, Delhi has learnt to live with the interruptions that punctuate every journey. The pothole has become Delhi’s most unyielding companion, surviving every season, every government and every grand announcement of reform.

From the pre-Independence muddy tracks to the asphalt corridors of today, potholes are the one thing that has remained consistent. The city has changed shape, creed, and ambition; generations have grown from cycling across Chandni Chowk to cruising in Maruti 800s to gliding in luxury sedans and SUVs. Yet no matter the vehicle, the ride has always been bumpy. The irony is that a Capital that measures its success in kilometres of motorable road continues to hobble along, its every stride interrupted by wounds in the pavement.

Every monsoon, the ritual repeats like clockwork. The skies open, the gutters swell, and Delhi’s fragile roads crack under pressure. Photographs of commuters splashing through waterlogged lanes go viral year after year. Repair drives are announced with fresh optimism, and often with much fanfare. Ministers pose with shovels and cold mix, vans are dispatched with geotagging apps, dashboards count every filled crater. Yet the following season, the craters return often in the exact places where they were filled months before. Even the leafy enclaves of Delhi’s most upscale neighbourhoods -- Vasant Vihar, Greater Kailash, Golf Links – are not spared.

The presence of a pothole tells a story of shortcuts hidden beneath asphalt, of decisions taken in haste, of budgets stretched thin, of drains left clogged, of a system that knows how to build but not how to endure.

The birth of a pothole

To understand the menace, one must return to the beginning. Potholes start with minute cracks or fissures in the road, often invisible to the untrained eye. These largely emerge from structural deformities, hurried overlays, or a foundation weakened by age or poor workmanship.

A stretch completely marred with potholes causing dust pollution in Patel Nagar. (Sanchit Khanna/HT Photo)

Delhi’s intense climate (particularly strong spells of heat) does not help. In the summer, heat bakes the asphalt until it softens and expands; in the winter, temperatures plunge. The constant thermal stress exposes every fault line in the road’s construction, encouraging fractures to multiply.

Once a crack forms, water begins a slow creep that finally ends up being the main destructive element. With each spell of rain, water seeps into the fissures, slowly dissolving and separating the carefully compacted roadbed beneath. What started as a thin line leads to a soft, spongy underlayer of weakened soil under what appears to be solid ground. Then comes the traffic. Cars, trucks, buses – tonnes of weight pounding the already compromised base. Over days or weeks, the subsurface collapses into small pockets of muddy emptiness.

With little support beneath and relentless pressure above, the top layer of the road finally surrenders. A bump appears, then a depression, and slowly that depression grows teeth, turning into the jagged mouth of a pothole – a familiar sight to every commuter across India.

“Most of the roads you see are often relaid too quickly. We fix the surface but the foundation remains weak. Whenever it rains, water finds these tiny cracks and starts the process which leads to a pothole. It is a cycle and we are usually prepared to keep reworking on these potholes,” said an engineer who works with the Delhi government’s Public Works Department (PWD), explaining the city’s habitual recurrence of the problem.

He detailed the anatomy of road construction: a subgrade, a sub-base, a base course, a binder layer, and finally the bitumen surfacing. Weakness at any stage, a compromise in materials or compaction, can turn an otherwise durable road fragile. The issues, he explained, are further compounded by factors that Delhi knows intimately – haste, cost-cutting and waterlogging.

“Cold mix applied in haste does not bond easily with the roadbed, especially when the base has also been affected by the waterlogging. Blocked drains keep the subgrade moist and heavy vehicles accelerate the degradation leading to these potholes returning,” the PWD engineer cited above, who asked not to be identified, said.

The governance puzzle

But beneath the chemistry of asphalt and the physics of stress, lies another issue that is not uncommon to the people – bureaucracy. Delhi’s roads – ranging from wide, multi-lane expressways, to critical arterial roads such as the Ring Road, to narrow neighbourhood alleys – fall under the control of at least seven agencies, each with its own mandate and budget.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) owns about 12,704 lane kilometres; PWD holds 1,400; the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) manages 1,298; Delhi State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (DSIIDC) 2,285; the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) 435; the government’s Irrigation and Flood Control Department (I&FC) 297; and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) holds around 40.

Fragmented responsibility ensures that accountability dissolves like soil beneath the bitumen. Tenders reward the lowest bidder, not the most qualified. The result is a city stitched together with patchwork repairs that end up being temporary bandages over decades-old wounds.

“Potholes are not something supernatural that magically appears. If work is done with accountability and use of proper materials, there is no way that potholes will appear. The problem is that our country is now used to a big scam of L1 licensing or tendering that allows the lowest bidder to get the tender and make the road. So, cutting costs takes priority over quality of work, expertise and knowledge,” said Sarika Panda Bhatt, trustee of Raahgiri Foundation, a non-profit trust that works on improving urban mobility with focus on public health, road safety and inclusive infrastructure.

Beyond governance, there is the quieter moral cost, harder to quantify yet deeply felt. The daily encounter with a pothole is a small fracture in the citizen’s trust in the state.

“When hundreds of thousands of citizens move through a city expecting basic infrastructure and instead encounter recurring potholes, it is not just inconvenience—it is an everyday erosion of aspiration,” said PS Uttarwar, former additional commissioner of DDA. “Each broken road is a message that the state’s promise can be ignored with impunity. It says that your dignity, your time, your safety are negotiable.”

“To expect better roads is not elitism, but a basic social contract. When that contract is breached repeatedly and predictably, the aspirations of millions are being slowly killed by bureaucracy and by an administration that prefers spectacle to sustained care. The damage is cumulative for all sections of society. The poorer neighbourhoods feel it first, but when posh enclaves begin to bear the same scars, the betrayal becomes impossible to ignore,” said Mehta, associate director, urban development, WRI India.

A fallout borne by the common man

For all the symbolism of neglect, potholes also inflict a more measurable pain: the bills they generate. For many households, a sudden dip into a crater translates into a lost salary.

“Potholes can wreak havoc on vehicles, from rims to suspension and alignment, nothing is spared. The engine can seize, the suspension can get knocked out, or the shock absorber can bend. Repairing an engine alone can cost around ₹6,000, while fixing a suspension can set you back by ₹2,000 at the least,” said mechanic and vintage car restorer Kalim Khan.

When a car hits a pothole at speed, the damage can be startling: bent shock absorbers, broken suspension arms, cracked chambers leading to oil leakage, snapped link rods. SUVs, with their heavier frames, often suffer worse damage – ₹ 6,000 to ₹10,000 at minimum.

“As for two-wheelers, even a single jolt from a pothole can bend the rim or damage the shock absorber,” Khan said.

The cumulative financial burden is staggering. A study by Punjab Engineering College revealed that potholes cost vehicle owners in Chandigarh ₹500 crore annually – a city far smaller, with far fewer cars than Delhi.

The human toll is equally grim. According to a 2023 report by the Union ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH), potholes claimed 2,161 lives in the year – a 16.4% jump from the year before. In cities with over a million residents, potholes accounted for nearly 1.6% of road accidents and 1.8% of road accident deaths. In Delhi alone, a staggering 130 deaths in 2023 were attributed to road features including curved roads, construction zones, and potholes.

potholes

Searching for solutions

Meanwhile, short-term repair drives feed a political appetite for visible action. But long-term structural reconstruction requires budgetary patience, rigorous supervision and a willingness to confront vested interests and corruption.

There are innovations being experimented with. The Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) has, for instance, developed an eco-friendly cold mix called ECOFIX that can repair potholes within minutes even on wet roads. The technology has been tested successfully, yet its use remains sporadic. NHAI has tested so-called “self-healing” roads using asphalt that is infused with steel fibres and epoxy capsules, which can repair small cracks and prevent water infiltration.

“Engineers know the solutions. What they cannot always force is the institutional will. Maintenance is often a political and financial decision to not incentivise quick fixes. The cost of poor-quality work should be made visible through penalties, blacklisting and public audits. If this is not done, potholes will keep coming back. It holds true for all infrastructure work,” said S Velmurugan, chief scientist and head of the traffic engineering and safety division at CRRI.

Earlier this year, the Delhi government announced with great fanfare that it had repaired over 3,400 potholes in a single day. Dashboards glowed green. Social media hailed the achievement. But within months, the craters returned – proof that Delhi is not short on technology, funds, or expertise. It is short on continuity of care.

“Pilot projects succeed but scaling them up threatens the entrenched order. There’s comfort in the status quo. Potholes keep everyone busy and employed. A pothole is also an economic opportunity. Everyone gets a cut,” said a former DDA official.

The road ahead

But closer to reality, roads in several parts of Delhi continue to resemble a battlefield – patched, bruised, enduring. A city that once dreamt of becoming world-class still limps along on wounded streets, carrying both ambition and apathy on its back.

In the silence between a bump and a brake, one realises the truth: a city is not judged by how fast it builds, but by how well it holds together.

And Delhi, for all its promise, is still learning how to hobble on.