"Corruption, inefficiency, robbery, fleecing of Commuters colossal national waste of precious FE man hours - NH8 GGN", Anil Sood on Twitter
"Corruption, inefficiency, robbery, fleecing of Commuters colossal national waste of precious FE man hours - NH8 GGN", Anil Sood on Twitter © Anil Sood, Twitter

In the Indian capital of Delhi, traffic is part of life as commuters routinely find themselves snarled in miles-long gridlock. And a series of photos tweeted out by social activist Anil Sood, who’s been protesting the lack of adequate traffic management by local governments, shows just how bad these gridlocks can get.

Pictured is a 26-lane jam on National Highway 8, a 17-mile long expressway that connects Dehli to the industrial district of Gurgaon. It’s one of India’s busiest highways. Ironically, the standstill is in large part the result of an experimental effort to ease congestion along that expressway, according to The Daily Mail. ... “Little thought seems to have gone behind each experiment,” writes reporter Sharad Kohli in an op-ed for The Times of India. Each time a new plan goes wrong, officials from the Gurgaon Traffic Police and the NHAI begin pointing fingers at each other. More recently, commuters going from Delhi to Gurgaon were stuck in traffic for five hours during rush hour after barricades blocked three exits on the expressway to “prevent driving on the wrong side.” Commuters blamed Gurgaon traffic cops, and the cops blamed NHAI for working on road projects during peak hours.