“The important implication of this is that if you wait to become developed [...]

Very well said. There is a increasing noise in Bangalore about if the Infosys or Wipro are earning money – they should be responsible for building roads also ! This is utter crap. Aren’t they paying taxes? Because bureaucrats are sleeping must software industries build roads??

Completely support the idea of roads being built by private enterprises – as a matter of investment – as their core business !!
RailRoad was a good example.

No free lunches. They don’t last or taste bad.

Secondly, railroads are state-run and they bear the concomitant bureaucratic disadvantages of being ridden with graft. Anyone who has tried to ship furniture or even vehicles via the Railways can attest to personal experiences involving bribery.

I agree that we should not be SUV dependent gas-guzzlers and that there is not much room within cities to add roads.
I am all for mass-transit within cities. But the issue here is a nationwide road infrastructure. Consequently, intra-city public transportation has little bearing here.

Finally, the AIDS comment is irrelevant, so I am going to sidestep that. Same thing about pollution — add trees on the sides of highways. Not that moving good around in diesel-run trains is very green.

The idea of freeway systems, infact even widespread use of cars in Indian cities, is incongruent to the Indian context because Indian cities are very densely populated and there just is n’t enough space. And let us not even talk about pollution. Is it not more important to be able to breath?

Instead of emulating the American dependence on cars for suburban living, mass transit systems need to be developed and improved in India. For inter-city transporation of consumer goods, India has an excellent rail system that should be further enhanced, instead of trucks and building freeways. It will also move the goods faster and safer.

Incidentally, India also has the highest accident rate for road travel and AIDS is being spread, far and wide, by the truck drivers.

Personally, I find the freeways to be an eyesore and noisy and driving, in general, to be very tiring. For example, Shatabdi Express between Delhi and Chandigarh covers the distance in three hours. Try doing that by car without getting tired!

That said, I don’t see the point of a Wipro or a Infosys ’stepping in’ and building roads as charity.

The best example of nationwide infrastructure built from private initiative is the american railroad. It made the fortunes of the Vanderbilts and spurred the retail revolution in America. I know about the perils of not adapting ideas to the Indian context, but I am waiting for someone to point out how this parallel is incongruent to the Indian context.

This public-private partnership is a big hog wash by a incompetent administration. It is largely the work of govt. not private industries to spend their money and time building roads(unless its their core job!). A GE or a Boeing in USA is not expected to spend time building roads, but in India there is sufficient noise about why Infosys or a Wipro and not spending money and time in building road. Infact they are willing to spend too (which they need not – having paid taxes!) – but they know there is no accountability and would not know what happened to their money.

Important thing is to place the guy with the relevant ideas in the right profession- Make your passion your profession

Among many other articles on similar and related subjects, I believe this one was a classic. The simple ideas contained in the article have profound implications once you begin to think of them.

I am from a non-economics background and making my own small effort to understand these issues, which are unquestionably very important. Some of your articles do a very good job questioning my understanding and long held notions.

So, although you may be very frustrated with what you see all around, please don’t stop expressing your thoughts lucidly…you can be sure its making many like me think!

Sorry to see a great intellectual like yourself wasting your time. The country needs realignment of the power structures before any significant economic development can take place.

In India, investments in infrastruture appear to be guided by interests other than those of the general population and the country as a whole. Vested interests of politicians and other members of the power structures dictate misplaced investments. It is a feedback loop system going towards instability. Politicians need money to win elections. Political power is, therefore, abused to perpetuate power. In India, we need to eliminate the need for funds required for winning elections. Again, aping the democracies of the developed nations won’t help.

2] The Mumbai-Pune Expressway is a typical example of misplaced investments, miniscule as they are, in infrastructure. And so are the investments in the Mumbai and Delhi Expressway systems. What percentage of the population benefit from these examples of aping of the US? Alternatively, the mass transit systems need to be improved. Delhi Metro is a step in the right direction.

Lately every blogpost of yours takes some goody-goody simplistic one-dimensional textbook stance towards some very complex problem, and then finishes on an offensive note. Let me try to cheer you up with some personal observations from India.

One of my close friends owns a cycle-repair shop. Every morning, one of the boys who work in that shop go to the road and drop tiny sharp nails, inconspicuously ofcourse.
We all know why he does that. Otherwise he would not have a livelihood.

I have been a victim of those nails several times. When I took my punctured cycle to his shop, the boys would carefully take out the nails ( they can re-use them , mend the puncture and set me on my way. Sometimes I would come back because there were more nails down the road. In this manner, I have lost several productive man-hours in my school & college life. But that is a small price to pay for the sake of that cycle-shop owner and all the boys who work there. Btw, after all these years, he is still in business and he now employs close to 30 boys.

Now if I take some lawyers, cops and close-circuit cameras, and catch that boy sprinkling nails, and then get the cycle-shop sealed, yes, I and all my fellow residents will have so many productive man-hours, perhaps so productive the sensex would go up by 100 basis points just because of us But at the same time, those 30 illiterate boys who work there – they will take to petty crime, thievery, harassment, arson. So it is a tradeoff. We put up with the occasional puncture so we don’t have crime in our locality.

Btw, no cop would arrest that cycle-shop owner. The cops knows but he gets paid off. The cobbler, he knows too because he mends the shoes when the nails poke through them. The tea shop owner knows, because he sells chai and biscuits to the people getting their puncture mended! Everybody knows.

Now this is a story of my street in India, the story of some 45 people. Now you take this story and scale it up by all the millions of Indian streets and cycle shops and you will see who is collectively stupid.

The cycle-shop owner is not sprinkling nails because he is an idiot. Let me tell you about another figurative cycle-shop owner, the Head Of Department of the engineering college where I studied. He would start teaching Thermodynamics, then gloss over all the details, and when we raise hands and ask questions, he would say – well there is only so much time, I cannot explain everything in the classroom. Why don’t you take tuitions with me ?!! See, this HOD is an IIT educated PhD. Even he is ultimately a cycle-repair shop owner. He is not content with his miserable wages paid by the university, so he plants these nails in the classroom so that the students can get their mental punctures mended at his private tuitions. Again, this is just 1 university, 1 HOD. But you scale it up, you get the big picture.

I am not trying to say there is some giant conspiracy afoot in India, trying to keep it from becoming a rich country. Just that India is rich in its own way – all these PhDs and cycle-repair guys, cops,cobblers,chaiwalas co-exist in their native eco-system by solving each other’s artificially-created problems. Yes, it is all quite repulsive to a straight-thinking well-meaning highly educated developmental economist, but from the pov of the natives, the economist can go stuff himself. When you say the civil engineers and designers of the highway did not think, you are dead wrong. They all thought quite deeply – about their own interests. Their incentives are just not aligned with the incentive of the economist.

It is a very complex hospital, my friend. Some are sick and choose to stay there, others stay there because they are sick, still others..

Atanu’s response: Do the words “I will seek out smart ideas, adapt them to my needs, and adopt them” mean anything to you? Does the word “adapt” mean anything?

Atanu takes a road trip from Pune to Mumbai and has some thoughts to share. I loved this part: He believed that because India [...]

Atanu’s response: Azeem, the matter of the factors which are driving infrastructure deserves a separate post. The problem in short can be traced to public goods (as economists understand them) and the little matter of what is called the “tragedy of the commons.”