India’s Infrastructure

India’s Infrastructure Story – Why is India not able to Build like China?

When it comes to finding out the reason WHY is India not able to build like China, our neighboring country, which has grasped the pace to become the world power, there could be many reasons. Nonetheless and to some extent as a form of excuse, we refer to the 7 decades old British India and their over-exploited policies which had eaten India although we also have our own problems. Our literacy rate was 12% while just after Independence. India is now a federal union and the once divided 552 princely states have been united and further divided into 29 States & 7 Union territories. To have calmed the chaoses took India long time, and presently many big reforms e.g. GST, demonetization etc have been saught, so we are growing. To state other crucial reasons can be the non-adherence to the various schemes and policies that are launched by the government in the meantime, high-level corruption within the system, chaos caused every now and then e.g. So-called- self-proclaimed guru Ram Rahim who is now behind the bar & the supporter of whom took to street when he is announced guilty in his rape case. India is a diverse country with several religions and people from different ethnicities who are all trying to live peacefully in the country. These people are distributed among various classes in the society. The welfare schemes which are launched by the governments are more in macro level & lack proper research. When we have to improve upon a factor that exists only much smaller part of the country, we launch it at the National level. Many times it has been seen that they are largely amended after the launch. Why do the policies are implemented to cause chaos? Some of them are forcefully launched because of political reasons. These gaps must be filled quickly once we identify that development is the only way.

It is not that India is not concerned about the development. Our auditing system is poorer. There is a huge difference between the ground level reality & the report in the paper. We may say that Government under the Swachch Bharat campaign has been successful in building a number of toilets in the rural areas & for that huge amount of funds had been dispatched. Recently when I interacted with a fellow person from my village & I asked about the toilets to which he reflected the inefficiency of the scenario. The targets have been achieved without the focus on quality. These are not built for long-term use and the fund has been diverted through corruption but no one is willing to act.

Do we not have the resources? Do we not have the manpower? We have.

The proposed Bullet train corridor between Mumbai & Ahmadabad is a welcome move. Some are of the opinion that the GDP and the Human Development Index of India are still not up to the accepted level to allow the government to get us into the debt. They are of the opinion that India firstly needs to divert its attention to more welfare schemes which are more diverse in nature than concentrating at the micro level. They are partially correct. Looking from a government perspective, it will help us in getting the latest technology from Japan, not to mention that the borrower country has shown a high level of support in terms of providing us with the very low-interest rate. But this project will also be helpful in developing Ahmadabad, to make it come to the par of one of the few metro cities of India. India is still lacking the motivation to diversify our economy into the whole of India. Leaving behind few cities e.g. Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Bangalore etc. the economy of the rest of India is in trouble, the rising level of urbanization in a haphazard way is the proof of it. It is the tendency of the public who are shifting from the agrarian to non-agrarian sector to move to nearby urban centers. Hence helping us in building a conducive and friendly environment that also protects the ethics sanctity of the nation.

What is the way forward? With the majority of the BJP government in the center and the states, many have been reforms have been implemented although with a rough calculation of the infrastructure support. That’s true for both demonetization and the GST coming. And both have been proved quite unfriendly in terms of their services. Thus with certain glitches, Indian infrastructure did improve but it has a long way to go.