A 90% increase in school enrolment, especially girls, increase in female workforce and improved job opportunities — all this is a result of the extension of National Highway 2 (NH-2) to four lanes. The extension — covering 995 km between Agra and Dhanbad — has led to an overall enhancement of living standards of the people who live within 5 km of the highway across 1,697 villages of UP, Bihar and Jharkhand, a World Bank-funded study has found.