Mumbai — India’s financial capital and a city that never sleeps — continues to wrestle with two problems that just won’t go away: potholes and traffic congestion. Each monsoon season, complaints surge as roads crumble, vehicles stall, and commuters spend endless hours stuck in jams. Despite repeated promises from city and state authorities, the situation seems to repeat itself year after year. The question raised at the India Today Conclave 2025 was both simple and profound: Can one agency fix Mumbai’s potholes and traffic woes once and for all?
A City in Gridlock
The debate featured key voices from Maharashtra’s political and administrative circles — Varun Sardesai, MLA from Bandra East; Ashish Shelar, Maharashtra’s Minister for IT and Cultural Affairs; and Kaustubh Dhavse, Chief Advisor to the Chief Minister. Together, they tackled the tangled web of Mumbai’s civic infrastructure, where no single agency holds full responsibility for roads, drainage, or traffic management.
The numbers tell part of the story. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) controls roughly 2,050 kilometres of city roads, while more than 15 different agencies — from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) to the Public Works Department (PWD) and the Mumbai Port Trust — manage another 500 kilometres. When a city’s transport arteries are split across so many hands, accountability blurs.
It’s this overlapping jurisdiction that, according to Sardesai, lies at the heart of Mumbai’s infrastructure paralysis. “You cannot have ten agencies digging and repairing the same stretch of road at different times and expect efficiency,” he argued. His proposal? Empower a single body — ideally the BMC — to handle all road-related responsibilities.
The Case for a Single Agency
Sardesai’s point resonated with many in the audience who’ve witnessed the chaos first-hand. Each monsoon, roads are freshly laid, only to be dug up within weeks by another department laying cables, repairing water lines, or expanding the metro. “One agency needs to be accountable from start to finish,” Sardesai emphasized.
His idea isn’t new. Even the BMC Commissioner told the Bombay High Court in 2022 that if all city roads were handed over to the municipal body, the pothole problem could be “solved permanently.” With a unified control structure, tendering, quality checks, and repair accountability could become streamlined, reducing both duplication and corruption.
Moreover, a single-agency model could centralize data — monitoring road conditions in real-time, mapping problem spots, and scheduling repairs systematically rather than reactively. Such integration could be achieved with digital dashboards and mobile apps like BMC’s My Pothole Quick Fix, which already tracks citizen complaints and promises repair within 48 hours.
The Counterpoint: Too Complex for One Body
However, Minister Ashish Shelar was skeptical. “Even within the BMC, there are multiple departments — roads, drainage, stormwater, traffic coordination. Expecting one agency to handle everything efficiently is next to impossible,” he said.
Shelar highlighted the bureaucratic culture that often slows down decision-making. Coordination, he argued, is as much about attitude and accountability as it is about structure. “You can merge departments, but if the mindset doesn’t change, the potholes will remain.”
Kaustubh Dhavse added a practical perspective: rather than overhauling administrative structures, a “war-room” model under the Chief Minister’s Office already coordinates inter-agency work, ensuring faster resolution of disputes and decision-making. “Centralized oversight can achieve what structural mergers cannot,” Dhavse said, pointing to improved coordination during the recent monsoon.
Why the Problem Persists
The panel’s discussion underscored the multifaceted nature of Mumbai’s infrastructure challenges:
- Overlapping Jurisdictions: Too many agencies are responsible for small pockets of the same network, leading to fragmented maintenance and conflicting timelines.
- Poor Quality Control: Roads are often relaid without addressing underlying drainage or foundation issues, causing rapid deterioration.
- Reactive Repairs: Instead of long-term planning, roadworks are often undertaken in response to citizen outrage or seasonal crises.
- Weak Contractor Accountability: Once contracts are awarded, poor supervision allows substandard work to pass unchecked.
- Traffic Mismanagement: Congestion is worsened by lane-cutting, haphazard parking, and inadequate enforcement, all of which fall under multiple authorities.
A Times of India report noted that in just two monsoon months, over 7,000 pothole complaints were filed, with 38% coming from only three wards. This statistic exposes not just the scale of the problem but also its uneven distribution — some wards face chronic neglect while others see rapid repairs due to political or administrative pressure.
Beyond Potholes: The Larger Urban Question
Mumbai’s potholes are more than an infrastructure issue — they are a metaphor for the city’s fractured governance. The lack of coordination among agencies mirrors the broader challenge of urban management in India’s megacities, where multiple authorities operate without clear accountability.
A sustainable fix demands systemic change rather than seasonal firefighting. Experts at the conclave proposed:
- Unified Road Management Authority: All city roads under one jurisdiction for seamless repair and maintenance.
- Integrated Traffic Plan: A state-wide framework linking road design, signal timing, and public transport to reduce congestion.
- Digital Monitoring Tools: AI-driven pothole detection and citizen dashboards for transparency.
- Performance-based Contracts: Penalizing contractors for repeat failures within warranty periods.
- Citizen Participation: Involving residents’ associations to monitor works and report issues in real-time.
A Roadmap for the Future
If Mumbai is to overcome its perennial pothole crisis, it needs both vision and vigilance. Some panelists at the conclave called for a 20-year infrastructure roadmap — one that moves beyond political cycles and focuses on resilience, not patchwork. The goal isn’t just to fix roads but to restore citizens’ faith in public systems.
The consensus was clear: a single agency might not solve every problem, but a single point of accountability is essential. Whether that comes from empowering the BMC, creating a dedicated urban infrastructure authority, or strengthening the CM’s war-room, the end goal remains the same — smoother roads, faster commutes, and a city that works as hard as its people.
Mumbai’s traffic and pothole problem is not just an engineering challenge — it’s an administrative one. Until governance becomes as integrated as the city’s road network needs to be, Mumbaikars will continue to navigate not just bumps on the road, but bumps in the system.
The India Today Conclave discussion offered hope — that the city’s leaders are finally acknowledging the real issue: not lack of money or manpower, but lack of coordination. Fix that, and Mumbai might just find its road to recovery.
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