Recently, the road transport ministry provided to the Lok Sabha the details of pothole-related injuries and deaths in India. The five-year data (2020 to 2024) showed that potholes claimed 9,438 lives, i.e., 5 cases per day. The maximum cases were from Uttar Pradesh (5,127), followed by Madhya Pradesh (969), Tamil Nadu (612), Odisha (425), Punjab (414), Assam (395) and, among the UTs, Delhi (50). Data for 2025 is unpublished. In contrast, 803 people were killed due to terrorism and 3,597 because of potholes in 2017. Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura recorded deaths and injuries because of potholes, but half of the other Indian states reported zero fatalities. These include Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chandigarh and, surprisingly, Goa! In the past two years, senior politicians were shouting themselves hoarse that all the potholes in Goa would be fixed in one month, and then they reduced it to 15 days, and it was always after the monsoon and before Ganesh Chaturthi. A senior politician announced the same towards the end of 2025, and dramatically added that henceforth people would ask the definition of “potholes.”
