The Chinese are significantly ahead of India both in qualitative and quantitative terms regarding railways. In 2004, China logged 363 billion passenger-kms, compared to Japan’s 396 and India’s 316 billion passenger-kms. (Source.) An item in today’s The Hindu reports:

In December, China opened what it described as the world’s fastest rail link, between Wuhan and southern Guangzhou, where a 350 kmph-speed train covers the 1,068 km journey in three hours, down from 10.5 hours. By 2012, China will have opened 42 high-speed lines, covering 13,000 km of its total railway coverage of 110,000 km. When completed, China’s will be the world’s largest high-speed railway network.

Compare China’s 350 kmph train to India’s premier Rajdhani trains which do an average of 70 kmph.

Not content with an amazing domestic rail network, China’s leaders are thinking of a 17-country transcontinental rail project.

China has finally reached agreements with several Central Asian countries and given the green signal to its ambitious pan-Asian high-speed rail link, which envisages connecting cities in China to Central Asia, Iran, Europe, Russia and Singapore.

Of course, the Chinese are not doing this for the fun of playing with railways. They are thinking ahead about energy.

When completed, the plan will give China unprecedented access to energy resources in many of these countries.

A spokesperson at the Ministry of Railways told the official Global Times newspaper on Friday that the Chinese government has initiated talks with some of the 17 countries involved in the project. China will bear the brunt of the cost of building the high-speed rail lines in many of the countries involved, but will in return get access to energy resources in a proposed “resources for technology” arrangement, the Global Times reported.

One of China’s leading railways consultant is quoted as saying:

“India is a relatively small country with a huge population. It will be too costly to build highways for India, so our high-speed rail link project will improve transportation efficiency and resources.”

Now where have I heard something similar before? Was it one of India’s railway ministers in the last 60 years? Nope. I think it was yours truly on this blog. From “The Integrated Rail Transportation System — Revisited” July 2005:

To achieve greater production and productive efficiency, an efficient transportation system is not optional but mandatory. Without one, the economy cannot achieve productive efficiency.

The transportation system of an economy as geographically large, as densely populated, and as resource constrained as India’s, has to have as its backbone a rail transportation system.

Roads transportation is not an option for India for a number of obvious reasons. Cars and fossil fuels are expensive. Very efficient alternative fuel cars are even more expensive. With 17 percent of the world’s population and 2 percent of the world’s land area, we cannot afford the luxury of high speed expressways the way that the US can. We have to be more fuel efficient than the US because it is not even theoretically possible to emulate the US with its automobile/airlines system. The US appropriates approximately a quarter of the world’s total energy use with only about five percent of the world’s population. To reach US standards of energy use per capita, India would have to increase its energy consumption 25-fold. (NOTE: all figures in this piece are approximate. The exact figures will not substantially alter the argument.)

To put it another way, India would have to use four times the total amount of energy currently consumed by the entire world. At present, India has to import over half of its fossil fuel needs and pays an unaffordable amount for it. India’s economy cannot be sustained on imported fuel. From here flows the case for solar energy, which we will not dwell on right now.

The same argument as above applies with even greater force when air transport is considered as the backbone of a national transportation system. Only a very insignificant percentage of Indians can afford to fly. By afford I do not merely mean individual capacity to pay. The system itself cannot accomodate it. You cannot have 75,000 daily flights serving India’s billion people, which is what you would need to match the US’s air transportation system around daily 30,000 flights serving around 0.3 billion Americans.

A bit of arithmetic is all that is needed to expose the underlying reality that we don’t have the option of having road or air as the backbone of India’s transportation system. We not only cannot afford the fuel (source constraint), but we cannot also afford the pollution (sink constraint) of 700 million cars and 20,000 airliners spewing exhaust — as would be required to match the US on a per capita basis.

Rail transportation is of particular interest to me because it is critically important for India’s development. I think that India’s leadership — which boils down to one particular family and one particular party — is really not interested in India’s development. They are more interested in hanging on to power, even if it means that India will continue to sink further into the morass that they created for India.

India is falling behind. In Feb 2007, in “Trains and the Transportation System” I wrote:

You wouldn’t believe it but it seems that in the early 1990s, India was ahead of China in route kilometer per capita and total route kilometer. In the decade starting 1992, China invested US$85 billion and jumped so far ahead of India that it is unlikely that India will ever catch up with China. India invested only US$17.3 billion in the same period. India’s route kilometer grew by ONE percent and China’s grew by 24 percent.

The sad part is that when I bring this comparison of India with China, I am told by some, “But India is a democracy.” So friggin’ what? Since when is it the rule that having a democratic system condemns a nation to be backward and poor? Why is it that well-off Indians explain away India’s appalling poverty on “democracy”?

If you have to explain away all failures of leadership of your country by saying “but we are a democracy”, you might be a third world country.

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.

That quote has appeared before on this blog. Two years ago in April 2007, I wrote in the context of India’s urbanization that India should “Make no little Plans.” Nearly four years ago in July 2005, the same quote appeared in the post where I revisited the “Integrated Rail Transport System (IRTS)” proposal that I promote. India needs a modern — efficient and fast — rail transportation system. I concluded that post with

. . . India always uses outdated ancient technology. For once, India should aim to use the best. And using the best — even if initially imported — will help us learn how to make the best. We need to have the humility to say that we need to import stuff that we can’t make today. We need to have the pride which makes us want to take the imported stuff and improve upon it so that others will look to us when it comes to the technology. We need to have the courage to make big plans.

We need to move beyond the myopia of the politicians and the idiocy of the generals wanting to arm themselves with nuclear subs and missiles and the greed of the peddlers weapons of mass destruction.

We need vision more than we need resources.

What brought this to mind is a recent editorial in the Indian Express titled — surprise, surprise — “Make No Little Plans” (Hat tip: Pranav Vasistha.) It talks about the US plan to spend $13 billion on a set of high-speed rail links. The US was never in the business of making little plans, anyway. But the US has not displayed the most exemplary of visions when it comes to rail transportation. Thankfully, reality is creeping up on them and they will figure it out eventually. Better late than never, I say. Now the high and mighty are quoting Burnham and saying “make no little plans” about rail transportation.

India should wake up and instead of making little plans must think big. Then I will stop having to say, “I told you so.”

India too needs a bold urban vision, as I have been arguing for a while. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) for India, most of India does not live in cities. India does not have to reinvent its cities — it has to build new ones. Fortunately though, the world has learned a lot about building livable cities and India does not have to go about reinventing the wheel: India has to be smart enough to learn from the mistakes the others have made. India can — and must — build efficient cities. That’s the only way out for the hundreds of millions trapped in villages in rural India.

I have been arguing for an rail transportation backbone for India. I proposed an “Integrated Rail Transportation System” in July 2005 (with follow ups here and here.) Broadly I have been arguing for a rational urbanization policy, an energy policy (which stresses the long term goal of developing non-carbon based energy technologies), a mass transportation system, and a modern educational system.

Here, for the record, are some bits from the NYT article:

. . . Europe and Asia began to supplant America as places where visions of the future were being built. The European Union spent decades building one of the most efficient networks of high-speed trains in the world, a railway that has unified the continent while leading to the cultural revival of cities like Brussels and Lille. And environmental standards for new construction were not only encouraged, they became the law — and have been for more than a decade.

This investment in traditional large-scale infrastructure projects is increasingly being coupled with serious thinking about the future of cities themselves. The Swedish government recently began a promising competition for a design that would replace a decrepit 1930s-era bridge in the heart of Stockholm with a seamless system of locks, roadways and shops. In Madrid the government is completing a plan to bury a four-mile strip of freeway underground and cover it up with parks and new housing. And only a few weeks ago the French government concluded a nine-month study on the future of metropolitan Paris. The study, which included some of Europe’s most celebrated architects, is the first phase in a plan to create a more sustainable, socially integrated model of “the post-Kyoto city.”

Even China, a country where centralized planning often looks like a grotesque parody of American postwar development, is beginning to move toward more sustainable, dense urban models. The government recently announced an $88 billion plan for freight and passenger trains that will link every major urban center along the country’s coast, from Beijing to the Pearl River Delta. And it is building miles of subway lines in booming cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

Below the fold I have quoted the last part of the essay. If you wish to skip the article, do read the last bit.

The Hydra-Headed Beast

Here is the real problem with the “greed is always bad, public provision is always good” perspective. As James Buchanan pointed out in “Politics Without Romance,” it makes no sense to assume that, under some circumstances (private buses), people are greedy, and under others (government buses), people are benevolent. The fact is that in both cases people behave purposively, pursuing their own goals filtered through the incentives and costs the system presents to them. Yet, the idea persists that removing profits and using government planning results in a kind of moral transubstantiation. Many planners think that profits are evil and would prefer a system that eliminates profits, even it means accepting substantial losses and no improvement in service.

No matter how many times this notion is killed off by experience and evidence, the hydra of planning grows another head, and political leaders trumpet the new reform in public service. Then, when the reform fails, commissions are formed, implementation is blamed, and budgets are raised.

The Transantiago bus reforms took an imperfect private system, operating without public subsidy and serving well over a million people a day, and “publicized” it. The expectation, almost pathetically naïve in retrospective, was that outlawing profits and demotivating drivers would change human nature. Worse, planners believed that they could dictate choices to commuters, who turned back to private automobiles instead. Why don’t they ever learn?

The real driving force of the world economy is a new and incredibly powerful economic unit: the mega-region.

Extending far beyond a single core city and its surrounding suburbs, a mega-region is an area that hosts business and economic activity on a massive scale, generating a large share of the world’s economic activity and an even larger share of its scientific discoveries and technological innovations.

While there are 191 nations in the world, just 40 significant mega-regions power the global economy. Home to more than one-fifth of the world’s population, these 40 megas account for two-thirds of global economic output and more than 85% of all global innovation.

The author, Richard Florida, notes that “The problem is that much of our public policy not only ignores the rise of the mega-regions, it actually works against them. If we want to bolster economic competitiveness and ensure long-run prosperity, we must pursue policies that take mega-regions into account.”

. . . it’s time to stop transferring wealth from our most productive mega-regions to lagging places. In the U.S., the past 50 years have seen a massive transfer of tax money from innovative and prosperous mega-regions on the East and West coasts to the South. While this transfer may be a boon to local politicians and developers, such misguided policy has diverted economic resources away from the core mega-regions where they can be used most productively.

This transfer of wealth from the most productive to the least productive is seen most starkly in Mumbai’s case. Mumbai is starved for resources even though it is one of the most productive regions in India. As I have been arguing for a while, cities are the engines of growth and if one wants to help the people of rural India, India has to move them to where they will be most productive. And that means that India has to build cities that are livable and which will be the target of the inevitable rural to urban migration.

India’s development requires that the rural population is urbanized since urbanization is a cause (and also a consequence) of development.

Though the article is written in the US context but much of it applies to India also. I have been arguing about fast rail connectivity between India’s metros. The WSJ article says:

. . . our urban policy should not be aimed only at improving schools, creating affordable housing and redistributing income. Urban policy must also start to address economic competitiveness. It must strengthen mega-regions by improving fast-rail transit between their nodes, modernizing airports, and achieving greater cross-border flows of goods and people.

I think it is time that India starts to seriously re-think its fetish with villages. One of Gandhi’s fetishes (and he had a few strange ones such nude sleepovers with teenage girls) was villages, and Gandhi is an Indian fetish. So this strange fascination with villages is really fetish-squared.

Related links:

(1) I have a 10-part series which begins with this post: Ancient Cities, Modern Slums.

(2) An Integrated Rail Transportation System (IRTS). And a follow up to it: IRTS Revisited.

France unveiled the successor to the TGV, the AGV — Automotrice Grande Vitesse, or “self-propelled high-speed” train. It’s top cruise speed will be 360 km/hr. The TGV has two engines, one at each end of the train. The AGV has motors under each carriage and is lighter and more energy efficient. The TGV holds the speed record for conventional rail when it touched 575 km/hr last year in April. The current batch of TGV have a top cruising speed of 320 km/hr.

I love trains and particularly like the TGV. Years ago when I was traveling around in Europe, I traveled quite a bit on the TGV and it was far more exciting than flying. There is something romantic about trains.

All this is very exciting for me. I look forward to boarding the AGV one of these days. But it is also a bit sad. India will never have anything that exciting. India just does not have the imagination. We are quite happy with our trains that do an average of 25 km/hr and our top speed trains average around 80 km/hr. It’s strange that passenger train service began in India over 150 years ago. We are a slow moving people.

[Related post: An Integrated Rail Transportation System.]

It scares me witless. These days, oil is selling for around US$85 a barrel. India imports most of its fossil fuel requirements. It is a poor country and cannot afford high priced oil — and oil is going to become increasingly costly because demand will continue to rise and supply will continue to fall. That is Econ101. India is also a very small country relative to its population. With 17 percent of the world’s population and 2 percent of the world’s land area, land is at a premium in India unlike say in the US (where the population density is a tenth of what it is in India.) You cannot just have cars: you need fuel and you need space to use the cars in. It is insane to not do basic arithmetic (”Those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to speak nonsense”) and realize that cars are not the solution to India’s predicament regarding transportation within its cities.

There is no contradiction in the above two. Tata’s achievement is in the private space — that as a corporation, it is supplying to a globally perceived need, the need for an affordable car. No other car manufacturer has done so before (except as a commenter noted the Ford Model T) but now many others are attempting to do so. Tata Motors changed the game — and now there is a rush to produce the “affordable car.”

There is a larger lesson here for Indians to take away. Indian corporations can make bold risky moves that transform how something is done in the world. The limited liberalization of the Indian economy has as one of its major fallout the demonstration that Indian corporations can take on the best in the world and thrive. The positive side-effects of Tata’s Nano goes beyond cars. It is about perceiving a need, having a vision to meet that need, and then delivering on a promise made. That will have an effect on the people of India, on the policymakers, and on other Indian corporations. That is what we call the positive externalities.

The negative externalities of even more cars on Indian roads is what is worrisome. It is transportation services that matter, not whether you get that service using cars, hovercrafts, trains, buses, etc. People balance their entire families not out of sheer bravado but because they don’t have the option of taking a clean comfortable bus. An efficient urban public transportation system in today’s world makes more sense than cars. The “public” is important. Public as in “public goods” and also as in “the people.” The private sector is fully capable of building a public transportation system but it requires public policy to do so because it involves the use of public resources such as the right of way and other legislation.

Ratan Tata is right in building the Nano. But that does not mean that the Nano will not make the already congested roads worse. The Indian policymakers must plan for good urban public transportation systems so that people have a choice other than balancing on two-wheelers or sitting in traffic.

[Related post: Trains and the Transportation System.]

In the image above, you see Ratan Tata in the Tata Nano. What a priceless shot. Notice that it says “Peoples’ Car” and not “People’s Car” — it is a car meant not just some people but for a varied group of people. It is a car for the various peoples of the world. I am not sure that that is what those who put up that sign meant. Maybe it is just a mistake. But that mistake speaks to a larger truth.

I also think it is interesting that “The People’s Car” translates to “Volkswagen” in German. The Volkswagen Beetle was built upon the express dictate of Adolf Hitler. Curious that we have Mr Ratan Tata as the promoter of India’s people’s car. In any event, Tata Motors is making a game-changing move and I am proud that an Indian corporation is doing so. Way to go, Mr Ratan Tata. May you succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

[For follow up to this post and its comments, see "Tata Nano -- Part 2".]

It scares me witless. These days, oil is selling for around US$85 a barrel. India imports most of its fossil fuel requirements. It is a poor country and cannot afford high priced oil — and oil is going to become increasingly costly because demand will continue to rise and supply will continue to fall. That is Econ101. India is also a very small country relative to its population. With 17 percent of the world’s population and 2 percent of the world’s land area, land is at a premium in India unlike say in the US (where the population density is a tenth of what it is in India.) You cannot just have cars: you need fuel and you need space to use the cars in. It is insane to not do basic arithmetic (“Those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to speak nonsense”) and realize that cars are not the solution to India’s predicament regarding transportation within its cities.

What India needs is foresighted leadership. It needs people to figure out that in the densely populated cities of India, efficient public transportation systems must be built now. For the existing cities, these public transportation systems should have been built decades ago. And that is not all. About 70 percent of India’s population lives in rural areas. This rural population will have to sooner or later have to be urbanized if they have to have any hope of rising out of their economic poverty. They cannot be accommodated in the existing cities which are bursting at the seams. New cities will have to built and right from the beginning public transportation must be built-in for them.

I think at the end it does not matter how cheaply the cars get built. The bottom line is gas will get to be expensive enough that few will be able to afford using those cars. And even if you could afford the gas, the question will be where will they actually drive? In Mumbai, most of the day you cannot cover more than 3 or 4 miles per hour by road.

Yes, those cars scare the hell out of me.

Follow up post: What and How.

[Related Posts:
1. Trains and the Transportation System.
2. An Integrated Rail Transportation System -- Part 1
3. An Integrated Rail Transportation System -- Part 2 ]

The signs are not good. I don’t mean about my bag but about the whole airlines business in India. People are not paying attention to the fact that India needs a long haul mass transportation system. And airways cannot be the long haul mass transportation system, nor can it be the road system. It has to be the rail system. There is nothing as efficient as steel wheels on steel rails for transporting hundreds of millions of people over distances that are of the order of hundreds of kilometers.

Last year I had proposed what I call an “Integrated Rail Transport System” which is worth revisiting. (A followup to that proposition is here.) I think it is time to again argue why an IRTS makes sense.

Yesterday’s The Hindu (a misnamed paper if there ever was one on the planet) carried an op-ed item which talked about China’s rail system. “At 76,000 km, the total length of China’s railways is behind only that of the US and Russia, and it is expected ot reach 100,000 km by 2020. The country already boasts of the world’s fastest train.”

The article quotes from a World Bank report titled “Highways and Railway Development in India and China from 1992 to 2002.” You wouldn’t believe it but it seems that in the early 1990s, India was ahead of China in route kilometer per capita and total route kilometer. In the decade starting 1992, China invested US$85 billion and jumped so far ahead of India that it is unlikely that India will ever catch up with China. India invested only US$17.3 billion in the same period. India’s route kilometer grew by ONE percent and China’s grew by 24 percent.

If only, lord if only, just once if India did something right in terms of infrastructure. Why are they so incredibly dense — the Indian policy makers — that they cannot get a friggin’ clue even when it stares them in the face? When would they stop their silly posturing about being this or that superpower and actually do something that will make the world stop and take notice?

I will now take a break for a moment of silence to mark the grief that I feel about the blind leadership that Indians vote for themselves. This blog will continue to propose solutions, of course, knowing full well that it is as useful as trying to teach a pig to sing: it cannot be done, it is a waste of time, and it annoys the pig.