Comments on: Pune Deci

By: JD

JD — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 06:49:52 +0000

As someone living in Pune, I’m amused to read this fanstasy about a dream city being completed in 6 years; it has taken more than 3 years to build 3 flyovers on a single road (the university road). The deadlines for the project’s completion just kept getting extended, and the latest one is June 30 2007. Of course, no one will be surprised if its extended again.

By: The Indian Economy Blog » The Future Past

The Indian Economy Blog » The Future Past — Sat, 19 May 2007 06:30:26 +0000

[...] [This has been parts eight and nine of a ten-part series. The previous part was Pune DeCi.] [...]

By: Madhav

Madhav — Thu, 17 May 2007 06:31:37 +0000

By the way, iam all for competitive markets and private property rights. But, we need to let the market forces operate within broader policy choices. For example, discourage private automobile ownership through high petrol prices for private 4-wheelers, but encourage market forces to compete within the public transportation sector. Let Tata’s come in to our cities and run the city transport, and let the government buses compete with it. Let Tata’s use their capital to create “Tata Transportation services”, How cool would that be ?

By: Madhav

Madhav — Thu, 17 May 2007 06:13:54 +0000

Full2njoy, personally iam not too “excited” about what’s coming to India in next 5 to 10 years. In fact, iam watching the events shaking my head. What we are doing is simply copying the western development model of building automobile driven, throw away societies.

Would you see Tata’s Rs 1 lakh car as a positive for India ? I don’t. Why do we want to waste so much of hard earned foreign currency (through exporting IT services), in importing oil ? India has 1.2 billion people with land 1/3 of US. DO we want to choke our cities with cars ? Do we want to lay asphalt roads on our precious lands ? We should be building a purely public transport driven society. I would immediately have a tiered pricing for petrol. Rs 200 per litre for private 4 wheelers. Rs 50 for others. How about that ?

Aviation: Why do we need extreme energy guzzling aviation sector ? Why waste money on buying expensive boeings and expensive fuel ? We can make our train system world class (It already is for the most part given the size of the network). Are our people so busy that they can’t afford an overnight journey in trains ? I don’t think so. It’s not worth the sheer energy/money waste. For any emergencies, you can have a very small aviation sector, but not “Air deccan” style mass-aviation. I don’t see that as a positive.

The throw away culture is just beginning to enter India. Plastic trash everywhere. Disposable everything. Positive ? you might argue it’s “free market” that’s driving this. It’s free as long as you assign externality of pollution a zero cost.

The wiser side of american crowd are lamenting the extreme car / aviation driven transport / consumption culture that has locked American economy into massive energy consumption. Why are we repeating exactly the same mistakes ?

By: Brown Sahib

Brown Sahib — Thu, 17 May 2007 02:42:59 +0000

Right on the mark, Full2njoy — cheers. :)

By: Full2njoy

Full2njoy — Thu, 17 May 2007 00:46:24 +0000

Chandra, i believe what the author speaks will never be achieved by our dear govt. It will happen only if the private sector takes it up. If we trust our govt to do something, it will end up looking like our airports.

Dont be disheartened by all these politicking. The same happened in aviation, airports, telecom, insurance etc. Look at the dynamism in each of those industries today. Something similar will happen to our urban areas too. Relax and watch the fun.

The next 5-10 years will be the most exciting in India’s history.

Cheers

By: Chandra

Chandra — Wed, 16 May 2007 19:10:28 +0000

Atanu, most of what you are proposing has to be policy driven - ie by babus. If, after laying the basic infrastructure, the city is allowed to develop on it’s own, the city will surely end up as another slum, just like a typical city in the country.

There are few models cities around the globe for what you are proposing - Las Vegas, Chicago and most major cities are in fact bad models to study from and to emulate. Smaller cities in Europe and US - Portland, Oregon, and, a much smaller, Glendale (outside Phoenix) comes to mind - compact cities (enables public transportation) with controlled growth with lot of greenery and open spaces. These cities have very controlled growth but are also expensive to live in because of upfront building costs and continued high taxes.

Most of the real estate companies, local or otherwise, are driven by same economics that produce inefficient buildings and neighbourhoods. I am not sure our babus are up the challenge.

By: Shefaly

Shefaly — Wed, 16 May 2007 08:56:09 +0000

Atanu: Marshall Plan was more than urbanisation-led; its primary advantage was that it was a reconstruction effort, not a development effort in an area with ‘legacy’. Much of Europe was not only destroyed physically. there were also inadequate food. Some countries in Europe, those with colonies, could have afforded their own revival but others could not. That the US created jobs in its own country while helping the reconstruction effort is probably not debatable, but the Marshall Plan was a time-limited offering. In some ways, without that time limit, who is to say it would not have become like the relationship between Indian Cotton - Lancashire Cotton Mills - Indian buyers-at-high-prices kind of circle of ‘virtue’?

I expect you will address things in your later posts.

PS: I couldn’t help but laugh at the Mungerilal reference! You have to agree it is funny, although hard to imagine how dreaming of construction projects may be classed as ‘haseen sapne’.

By: j. yin

j. yin — Tue, 15 May 2007 01:48:03 +0000

i agree with andiron. these recent daydreams are embarrassing for the site.

By: andiron

andiron — Mon, 14 May 2007 13:55:32 +0000

is this mungerilal?
get back to real work, chump.