Can Rural Roads in India Pave the Way Out of Poverty?
Featuring Shilpa Aggarwal
India’s massive rural road programme is unleashing profound economic changes across millions of newly connected lives.
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Shilpa Aggarwal
Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy. As a development economist, her research explores market linkages in developing countries, with a current focus on agricultural supply chains in India and East Africa. She also studies domestic trade, microfinance, and food policy.
Key Takeaways
- Rural roads drive market integration by lowering prices of goods from towns and cities, while expanding product variety for remote households, creating immediate benefits and potentially improving nutrition.
- Better roads change how families invest. Farmers adopt modern technologies like fertilisers and hybrid seeds that were previously too expensive or hard to obtain.
- Roads affect education differently by age: younger children attend school more, while teenagers often leave education earlier for new job opportunities—suggesting the need for additional policies to keep older students in school.