Delhi: A sharp rise in public spending on roadside landscape maintenance has intensified scrutiny over the effectiveness of Delhi’s urban greening strategy, as visible improvements across the capital’s arterial roads remain limited despite a substantially higher budget. The issue has renewed attention on how cities measure environmental outcomes, particularly at a time when green infrastructure is increasingly linked to climate resilience, public health and liveability.
The Public Works Department (PWD), which maintains approximately 1,440 kilometres of roads across the capital, has introduced a revised maintenance framework after replacing dozens of earlier contractors with a smaller group of agencies responsible for developing and maintaining roadside plantations. The transition has significantly increased the overall project value, placing an additional financial burden on the exchequer while raising expectations around service quality and long-term landscape management. However, field observations across several major road corridors suggest that the Delhi PWD greenery budget has yet to translate into healthier vegetation or denser roadside green cover. Newly planted saplings in some stretches continue to rely heavily on seasonal rainfall, while several central verges and roadside planting zones show signs of inconsistent upkeep. Urban planners note that successful roadside greening extends well beyond plantation drives.
Trees and shrubs require scheduled irrigation, pruning, soil enrichment, pest control and periodic replacement to ensure survival, particularly during prolonged dry spells. Without these interventions, plantation targets alone offer limited environmental value and may fail to deliver measurable reductions in urban heat or air pollution. Environmental experts also point out that roadside greenery plays an increasingly important role in mitigating the urban heat island effect, improving air quality and creating more comfortable public spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. In rapidly growing metropolitan areas such as Delhi, sustained investment in green infrastructure is viewed as an essential component of climate adaptation rather than a cosmetic urban exercise. Officials familiar with the revised maintenance system indicate that the newly appointed agencies have been tasked with adopting stronger monitoring mechanisms and performance-based maintenance practices.
The objective is to improve accountability while ensuring that public expenditure produces visible ecological outcomes instead of merely meeting contractual obligations. Even so, experts caution that procurement reforms alone are unlikely to guarantee better results unless performance is measured through survival rates, canopy growth and long-term ecosystem benefits. Transparent monitoring, independent audits and publicly available progress reports could strengthen confidence in the programme while helping identify areas requiring corrective action. As Delhi continues to expand its transport network and urban infrastructure, the effectiveness of the Delhi PWD greenery budget will increasingly be judged by tangible environmental improvements rather than expenditure alone. For a city confronting rising temperatures, deteriorating air quality and climate-related pressures, sustained maintenance of roadside vegetation may prove as critical as planting new trees, making implementation quality the defining challenge for future urban greening efforts.
