A few failures, most of which could have been avoided and can still be rectified, should not stop us from continually building infrastructure. To see how infrastructure development helps in the progress of a nation, we need only to look at China
It seems that only Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi understands what he is talking about. When he addressed a crowd of Dalits and exhorted them to gain the escape velocity of Jupiter, it left many people scratching their heads. This was an analogy that would have seemed bizarre even to a crowd of physicists. Unless of course he was comparing a certain political leader to Jupiter. Of course, coming from a person who thinks poverty is a state of mind, one should not have been surprised.
But it is what young Mr Gandhi spoke about in Madhya Pradesh recently that really puzzled many people. Attacking infrastructure development, particularly roads, he laid emphasis on ‘respect’, — to be more specific, on respecting the poor. To call this argument asinine would be a start, because better physical infrastructure helps a country in more ways than one, and it particularly helps in creating new economic opportunities, particularly for economically backward classes.
Take the State of New Delhi, ruled by Mr Gandhi’s own Indian National Congress for the last decade. This is not to argue that Delhi’s development has been perfect, but the construction of new roads and transit systems have undoubtedly led to more economic activity. It is possible today to get from deep inside the southern part of the city to the north in an hour by Metro. When you connect people, good things happen. The modernisation of Delhi airport, although it serves just a sliver of the population, has seen the city’s airport become the largest in India, heightening economic activity and generating jobs where there were none.
That is not to say that all infrastructure development is a good thing. The Airport Express Metro has proven to be a massive `3,800 crore white elephant, thanks to bad planning and apparently hurried construction. Such trains work excellently in cities such as london and Hong Kong, but those express trains are deeply intertwined with the city’s local Metro system. Matters were not helped by the fact that the airport connection did not connect the low-cost terminal where a majority of domestic passengers fly out of.
The Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway has become a victim of its own success. But rather than open it up, the authorities have let matters be, making things worse. In both Delhi and Pune, bus corridors were devised — a plan that looked good in theory. But they turned out to be a practical disaster.
However, a few failures, most of which could have been avoided and still can be rectified, should not stop us from continually building infrastructure. And to see how infrastructure development helps in the progress of a nation, we need not look too far. We just need to look at China.
There are several things not quite right with the ‘Chinese model’ of economic development, riding roughshod over the environment being one of them. But when you visit China you see how far the once agrarian country has lifted itself out of poverty. And it is not just in the sheer numbers of luxury cars, but the fact that on the whole people have a better standard of living than they did a decade ago. A child born in China today, even in a small village, has more opportunity than one born two decades ago.
The fact is that in some parts of India, a child born in a village today has more or less the same opportunity that his father and mother did two decades ago. Certain things have changed; in cities, there are definitely more opportunities. Yet, the income disparity means that stories of a child lifting himself or herself up from the clutches of poverty remain an occasional feel-good narrative for the English media to cover, rather than a regular occurrence.
How does physical infrastructure fit into the economic upliftment jigsawIJ Take the 100cc four-stroke motorcycle as an example. This single vehicle, mainly from the Hero Honda stable back then, did more to physically connect India. Villages previously a day’s walk apart became an hour’s drive away. Mobility opened economic opportunity to those who had motorcycles. As better roads were built and connectivity improved, children from these connected villages could go further afield to study and to work. Towns themselves grew as the local economy flourished. You don’t even need to look at recent history — look at the towns that developed when in 19th century they were connected by railway lines.
Almost universally, every parent wants their children to have a better life than they did. Respecting the poor does not mean mollycoddling them. Food security is a good thing, but without roads and transportation, how on earth will the food reach the intended beneficiaries deep inside India’s hinterlandIJ Without roads and more trains, how are the poor expected to move from place to placeIJ Or is the idea for them to remain poor and under-developed is that every once in a while, someone can emerge god-like from a helicopter and talk to them about respectIJ
Building roads, bridges and other better transport links are among the tools that help uplift people from poverty. At the end of the day, our policymakers and politicians must understand that crucial fact. Respecting poor, rural folks does not only mean respecting the man who walks on the side of the road. It means that one first builds a road for him to walk on and then help him to one day acquire a mode of transport so that he does not need to walk on the side of the road.
Respecting the aspirations and the dreams of Indians make for good politics. And Indians are dreaming and hoping for better roads, better trains, better everything.