India's Road To The Future

Paul 03244 writes "Historians, economists and technologists agree that movement of ideas, goods and services are fundamental to trade & advancement of the human condition. Today's online version of the NYT has a rather lengthy but fascinating article on the construction of a modern highway system in India that details some of the social & cultural changes being brought about by this highway project." Interesting to look at the parallels between the spread of tech and services in India and the same process in the U.S.

Comments

No Open Defecation By 2010

[IEBEYEBALL]

No Open Defecation By 2010. Puts a whole new spin on the phrase "outsourcing".

Corruption... ?

[geneing]

I came across an article in the Economist. They are much more cautious about the economic development in India. They mention corruption, bureaucracy, strong communist parties in parliament as the major threats. I'm hoping that someone with first hand experience could say more about this...

Re:Corruption... ?

[metlin]

And I must also mention that the left in India isn't left by a lot of standards (i.e. say, Europe). In some policies, they are quite centric and are even fiscally conservative. And in certain issues, such as privatization of all government assets, they tend to hold more leftist views.

Re:Corruption... ?

[CodeBuster]

The corruption and bureaucracy in India was legendary before the reforms of the early 1990s...just ask any adult Indian living in India today about the "permit raj" and you will know exactly what I am talking about. I once saw a picture of an Indian government permit office, you used to need a permit to do practicaly anything business related in India, where there were three lines stretching from three windows out to eternity with overworked clerks sorting through stacks of paper that reached from the floor to the ceiling in large bundles. In fact, it was so bad that practically every permit was procured by a bribe because it was impossible to work with the system and people had to work around it. Things have gotten better by all acounts since Mahmoud Singh turned things around. There is corruption here in the US to be sure, but compared to many other places in the world we have a remarkably well run and honest government bureaucracy. So the long answer to your question is that it can stop India if they let it get out of control again.

Chapter 4: India's Permit Raj 3:04

Re:Corruption... ?

[bakerst]

I think corruption and bureaucracy are still endemic but there have been a number of areas that the bureaucrats could not get their hands on - for e.g. the IT industry; by the time the politicians and bureaucrats could understand it, it had taken off, greatly aided by the fact that it involved non-physical goods. The larger problem is the law enforcement system which is still controlled by the politicians and hence not effective. Having a good legal system framework is beneficial but is not seen to be working until law enforcement becomes more independent.

Monsoon Railway

[matt me]

If you do ever get the chance to see this documentary, do!

It's called Monsoon Railway and documents how the staff at one station do their best to make the best out of a imposibly overcrowded and out-dated system through one seasons. It's incredibly uplifting. The people work through the night to keep it going. They have hospital trains manned with volunteers to send out in the event of any accident. There's one guy has only the smallest crummiest room himself to live in, but he feels so priveleged that he makes a shelter with his hands for the Indian railway children.

Seriously, if you think there's no hope, no ove, no humanity in this world, watch it. If you feel the third world is corrupt, hopeless not somewhere you can connect with, you're wrong. It made me want to travel, just to meet those people who commit such acts of kindness as if there was no other choice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/feature s/monsoon-railway.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/feature s/photogallery/indian_rail1.shtml

Re:Remember what Hihgways are

[pokstad]

It actually was Eisnhower who signed the bill for the Interstate System, he was impressed by Germany's autobahn when he was there commanding US forces. Interesting point though, that freeway systems were first developed for war strategies, but now for economic development.

I Don't Think I Read It Here...

[spudwiser]

But India's highway system also allows it to have an HIV rate comparable to south africa. Married truckers, truck stop hoes, and long routes have lead to an epidemic spread of the virus. Go figure. I'm glad condoms are $1 in the US, where a dollar doesn't matter.

Good to hear.

[jo7hs2]

I am a big believer in India, rather than China being the country to watch for growth and development. A great deal of this surrounds India's legal system, which closely follows the English common-law system, with a great respect for precedent and contract law. Take a look at the econmic success of both the U.K. and the United States, and you can clearly see the benefits of this system.

Re:Good to hear.

[AtomicBomb]

I am also a firm believer that legal system is crucial to the development of a modern country. It is a bit political incorrect. But, I have to say the importance for the respect of the legal system (ie, rule by the laws, everyone is equal in front of law) is probably way higher than that of a democratic government structure. Let's do the exercise: which one of the major industrialised nation (France, Germany, Japan, UK, US) has universal suffrage at the stage when the economy took off? Check wikipedia... basically none. Which one has a fully working legal system by that time? Every single one. On the other hand, the acutal legal system does not really matter (as long as it is fair to everyone). I can see no reason why, say civil law, is fundamentally worse than common law.

Capitalism Works?

[Dausha]

FTFA: "The real start came in 1991, when India began dismantling its state-run economy and opening its markets to foreign imports and investment."

So, what you're saying is that when India ditched Socialism and hopped on the Capitalist highway, then their economy really picked up speed? Fancy that. Next you'll be telling me that China abandoned Communism and became one of the world's fastest growing economies. Of course, adopt a bloated welfare/medical system, and there goes growth.

Re:Capitalism Works?

[mochan_s]

FTFA: "The real start came in 1991, when India began dismantling its state-run economy and opening its markets to foreign imports and investment."

This is a very bad simplification. When the British left India, it was in tatters. One of the prime push of India after independence was to develop all technology locally and rebuild the society. After they reached the point in development where they knew that the "state-run economy" was more of a hinderance than a help, they slowly started making change.

It wasn't that they just became enlightened at a certain point to capitalism. It was before that point capitalism wasn't the best way of doing things.

Re:Capitalism Works?

[The Cydonian]

basically, it was divided into public and private sectors, where the government controlled several core infrastructures in the public sectors.

To paraphrase TN Seshan on this, there's never been a good reason why the government has had to make condoms, for instance. And let's not even get into the whole shebang of respective state governments making television sets, scooters, refrigerators, cars, watches, milk-based products, bread, hotels, restaurants and so on, so forth. And even in the few places where the government didn't exist, the private sector had its goals set by the government; Lakshmi Mittal, for instance, was once famously asked by the Indira Gandhi government to reduce his steel plant's production capacity because it was over what the babus had planned for.

In short, what you stated was the Nehruvian explanation for India's brand of Fabian socialism, but is not enough of an explanation for the sheer amount of state control of the markets that later governments have had, and indeed, continue to have to this day.

For instance, India has never had a state medical system - sure, there are state hospitals - but still, majority of the medical system in the country has always been privatized.

Actually, that's not entirely true; our primary healthcare has always been in the public sector (which, for instance, would explain the relatively high healthcare metrics in Kerala, compared to relatively more prosperous Karnataka or Tamil Nadu). Private sector is more or less limited to tertiary healthcare (i.e., elective surgery) centers; you'll never find an Apollo or an Escorts doing, for instance, work on improving infant mortality rates or better vaccination. Not necessarily because they are coldhearted bastards, but mostly because that's not their job.

Again, tertiary healthcare in the public sector is heavily subsidised; AIIMS and other so-called super-speciality hospitals provide free healthcare to anyone with a Below Poverty Line ration card (the colour is white in Andhra Pradesh, don't know what it is in other states).

Another place where state-funding is apparent is in seeing how the annual Constituency Development Funds get spent; most MP's prefer setting up swanky new hospitals with no equipment or staff, than do something useful, like say, fund existing research in their constituencies or something.

So yeah, while we don't have an NHS-like system in India, the reason is not a lack of intent, but lack of a clear policy. That health is a concurrent subject (ie, both the central and state governments can make policy on this topic) doesn't help the cause.

The time when the growth started slowing down was about the time Soviet Union died - but this was owing to several factors, particularly a very bad political climate.

The current thinking apparently is that the beginnings were in 1981, when GoI allowed investment by Suzuki in the Maruti plant in Gurgaon. The Balance of Payments crisis merely formulated one-off attempts such as the Maruti into a coherent national policy.

So, India was never really a socialist state in the sense of the word

Socialism has different meanings in different parts of the world, of course, so I suppose if you talk in terms of, say, pre-Deng-Xiopeng Chinese socialism, or the communist countries, then yeah, we weren't socialist. But we were, and indeed, the Congress I and the Left are, socialist in the west-European sense of the term; among other things, the Directive Principles of State Policy states that it is our constitutional goal to create conditions for the establishment of a welfare state.

Heck, we've been the Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic of India for thirty years now.

Why not more rail?

[putko]

Does anyone -- perhaps an Indian -- know why India is building roads, and not rail?

If they built rail, they could transport more goods and people at a lower cost -- but with greater latency and planning required.

Because India is a poor country, don't they need more bang for their transportation buck, and not necessarily more convenience? Are they at least going to make the people who use the roads responsible for paying for them -- e.g. the cars and (especially) trucks that wear them out?

Why would they want to commit to a gas-based transportaiton system when, if they built trains, they could generate electricity and use that to power most of their transportation?

This looks like pretty bad public policy.

Re:Remember what Hihgways are

[Compuser]

The idea of building roads to aid movement of military units and
war-related shipments is rather old. The Romans built the roads
in Europe for that purpose. Indeed, it was the Roman army that
did most of the building. So ascribing this idea to Hitler is a bit
much. In fact, had this been Hitler's thinking, he would have never
invaded the Soviet Union, since that place had a lot of land and only
a few very bad roads. Many of those roads would become impassable
during rains so fall through spring the road system was terrible
and merely usable in the summer. So no, Hitler as visionary of road
building is kind of a laugh.

Roads in India

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an american who has been to India. One of the scariest things I have ever done was take an eight hour bus ride in India from Varrinessia to The Border of Nepal. The rule for driving in India goes like this, smaller vehicles cower to the side of the road when something bigger is coming. Any two lane road connecting towns in India has tons of people walking on it, bicycles, three wheel bicycle taxis, donkey carts, stray cows, motorcycles, taxis, private cars, dumptrucks and buses all in the space of two lanes. Since these modes of transportation have different speeds you can imagine that the faster vehicles are often on the wrong side of the road to pass the donkey carts, pedestrians, cows, bicycles, etc. Once it becomes dark then it really gets dangerous. We couldn't see more than 75 feet infront of the bus because of all the people who burn cow dung for fuel. The buses lights would hit the smoke on the road and almost completely obstruct your view. Our bus driver was a maniac, but I can almost see how you would have to be to get anywhere on those roads.

Re:Remember what Hihgways are

[thogard]

Facts on /.? Now for some more info...
Albert Speer's department worked with automotive engineers under direction of Ferdinand Porsche to change the rules about what a highway should be. They did the tables of calculations for the slant of the road as well much work on bridges and grade refinements. At the time a major state road in rural US areas would consists of two lanes with about a 1 ft grass median and there were a few multi-lane highways but all the others were just built like a typical paved street. Speer's group was the one that came up with extended bridges that would never flood as well as overpasses which lead to roads that could be used at night and after snow. Speer's main job was to build the "New Rome" and what he built was supposed to inspire the whole "might of Rome" concept so he did have an advantage when it came to justifying building a huge flat road out in the middle of nowhere complete with overpasses and fancy bridges.

The slope calculations are important because a road must have a slant to get rid of the water. The problem is then the car is going to run down hill and run off the road. The result of Porsche's groups work is a slight adjustment to the suspension so that the car tracks correctly on straight roads but slanted and properly banked roads. You may notice a slight dip before right banks and small hill before left turns on well built highways. Thats there to unbalance the suspension so that it will properly track the curve and nearly every modern car will track properly.

I've seen a bridge plans distributed by the US DOT (whoever it was in the '30s) that had Albert Speer's seal on it and someone had converted all the metric to feet/in. There are many bridges in Kansas that were built using that as a basic plan. Highway construction seemed to increase dramatically once Thomas Edison lost some of his monopoly on cement.

There was some law that ended up building landing strips in nearly every county in the lower 48 States. Their major use was for many years flying checks around and I expect the early funding was either part of a post office or banking bill. The stuff about using highways for landing strips makes no sense today considering all the side markers and signs and power lines that cross the things but drivers in Alaska have to give way to planes landing on the road.

Re:Aryan Invasion?

[CRCulver]

So there is also an alternate theory that proto-dravidian was also proto-sanskrit.

A theory based on no reasonable grounds. Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Dravidian have considerably different phonological, morphological, and typological structures. It's obvious to any neutral observer that they have no close relationship.

Given the European penchant for Racial "Supremacist theories"...

Most comparative linguists don't care about the colour of any proto-language speaker's skin. We're just interested in grammars and lexicons. Accusing those who disagree with you of being racists won't win you any turf in an argument.

While, there is overwhelming evidence (based on the Vedic narratives)

Few reputable historians would consider the Vedas to be legitimate history. They serve other goals than being dry and factually accurate, just like the Christian Bible. The Vedas have a rich importance in terms of their poetry, theological thought, and are important as the earliest attested Indic document, but they cannot be used as historical chronicles.

What you might want to know is that an important part of the Iran/Iraq (Persia) pre-islamic civilization was an offshoot of this Indigenous Vedic people (from the Indian Subcontinent).

Avestan and Old Persian, the languages of the pre-Islamic civilization of Iran, are from a different Indo-European lineage than Sanskrit. Regardless of what ideas flowed from India to Persia, the languages of pre-Islamic Iran are not descended from Sanskrit. Rather, both Avestan and Old Iranian, and Sanskrit are descended from Proto-Indo-Iranian.

There might have been an Aryan Migration, but more likely than not, it was from India outward, rather than the other way round.

This theory is not very well esteemed in the academy. It is upheld mostly by Indians with little linguistic training who have sinister goals linked to nationalism or religious fundamentalism. I'd rather trust scholars a couple of continents away who have no real agenda other than a love of language and the changes it goes through.

Corruption in the Highway Project took its toll

[animeshpathak]

Something that the article missed was that 2 years ago, an IIT engineer was gunned down in the state of Bihar because he blew the whistle on some of his seniors who were awarding contracts for the highway construction illegally. The most shocking part was that his letter to the ministry, which was marked highly confidential, was subject to the usual beaurocratic chain in the ministry, which led to the blowing of his cover and his death. The culprits have still not been brought to the book. However, this started a movement which is driving the creation of a whistleblower protection act in the Indian parliament.

More information about Satyendra Dubey is at the website of the S.K.Dubey foundation against corruption.
-A

Re:Remember what Hihgways are

[JonathanR]

The main highway between everything and Perth (Western Australia) actually has landing strip markings on it (and yellow diamond roadsigns warning drivers to watch out for landing aircraft.

Andhra / Telugu dominance in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

He had three daughters living there, one a computer engineer, the other two married to computer engineers. Most of his engineers - almost all, like him, from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh - had relatives in America, too.

No wonder that Andhraites (who speak the language TELUGU, popularly known as 'Italian of the East') form majority of the software professionals in the US. From Google's corporate page - 'Dozens of languages are spoken by Google staffers, from Turkish to Telugu.'. Telugus also form majority of the Indian employees in Microsoft. Not surprisingly, Hyderabad, not Bangalore, is getting the new US Visa Consulate as more than half of the visa applications from South India are from that state.

As expected, almost every major American city now has a Telugu organization
http://www.telugutanam.com/italianofeast, and Tollywood, one of India's largest film industries has found a profitable overseas market in the US.
http://www.telugucinema.com/c/cat_index_24.shtml

Bribery (somewhat) Legalized in Texas

[woolio]

In Texas, when one is stopped for speeding, they have the option to take a defensive driving course to get out of the ticket. (This is a state law). Upon completion of the course, the ticket will be dismissed. However, one still has to pay "court fees" even though there is no court appearance.

To a typical scenario is as follows:

1) J. Doe gets stopped in a small town for going 65 in a 55.
2) J. Doe sends check/money order of ~$100 to small town court.
3) J. Doe takes defensive driving course...
4) Ticket dismissed.

Note: The sending of the $100 technically is supposed to "delay" court proceedings. Which means means at no point was the citation ever upheld.

So basically J. Doe gets to pay court fees to "prove" he his innocent... Since when does the victor pay court fees in criminal trials??????????????????

This is really a bribe (thinly disguised), and it is manadated by law!

Yes, I know India has far more serious corruption problems, and is getting better. But where is the US going?

I grew up there...

[copdk4]

and some of my uncles had contracts in these highway projects. And I can tell you how this 'Road bizness' goes on in India.
First, lets start with my small town in western India (couple hundred miles from Mumbai). Every year they build new roads in the town but not 'new ones' instead they 'rebuild' the roads over same ones.. why ? coz every year the road breaks down (with lot of pot holes and gravel comes out), mostly due to heavy monsoon.. They dont use good quality asphalt and mix lot of gravel.. Ahh and one more reason why the roads break apart is that they start building new roads right around MAY-JUNE when the monsoon season starts in India and hence the road doesnt get chance to 'strengthen' all over my stay there (1982-2003) this happened every year and I m sure its a common phenomena all over the country.

Secondly, these construction companies (that includes my uncles & co.) who are subcontracted to build roads use all sort of means to bribe everyone right from the small clerk to big politicians (yes you have to feed'em all) to get the 'tender'. Once they get the 'tender'/contract.. they just wait.. wait.. like a frog... until monsoon sets in.. thats when they start building roads.. so its breaks faster.. and they can get another contract..

Thirdly, you would not believe but on all these highways.. they literally 'cut-off' margins on both side of roads to 'save' money.. and when you have to make such long highways we are talking about savings in millions.. No govt official ever goes to do any inspection..

Fourthly and most importantly - TOLLS ! what the NYT article doesnt talk about is that most of these highways are built in segments with each segment given to some construction company. What happens is that these companies show large costs and the govt says fuck that we cannot pay that much amount..so Company says.. let us built TOLL booth.. and we will recover rest of the money in 1 or 2 years.. and guess what, they go on collecting tolls for years.. w/o any road maintenance n all..

However, people in India are really happy with highways without potholes coz they can finally run their Japanese and American cars above 100Kmph since we basiclly dont have any COPs that comes after you to give tickets.. (isnt that cool !, the probability of you hitting a cow or dog or sheep (which I did once) and/or dying is higher than COP catching you for speeding)

Last winter I had been to India and we drove thru famous 'bombay-pune' highway which every 'Mumbaikar' would boast about since its modelled after Amercian standards and all fenced so no dog or cat or sheep can get in.. but the problem with people driving in India is that they are not used to looking at roads signs (we are not necessariy required to give a road test.. e.g. one day I was watching TV and my dad is like.. here son..your new licence..I had been driving since I was 14 :) okay along the bombay-pune highway my friend who was driving missed the exits twice and we had to travel like 20kms to get back.. oh well..sometimes these advances come with their own price.

Re:"mile by mile"?

[meringuoid]

I thought India was metric.

India was British for centuries. The UK is mostly metric, apart from long distances, which are in miles, and quantities of milk or beer, which are in pints; pints, I might add, which are rather larger than American pints, which I'm told you call British pints.

Chances are the Indians have acquired some of this fascinating heritage of inconsistent measurement :-)