India, Jan. 20 -- Twenty-five years have now passed since the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). Introduced in December 2000 by the government led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the programme set out with an ambitious mission - to connect India's villages with all-weather roads and integrate rural communities into the broader economy. At the time, nearly half of India's 500,000 villages lacked proper road connectivity. With over 70% of the country's population living in rural areas, this meant that nearly 740 million people were effectively cut off from basic services, markets, and opportunities. The absence of roads was a structural barrier to development, limiting access to education, health care, jobs, and...