In the months since my move to Delhi, some of you have remarked that I rarely mention work. Others call it my 'never-ending vacation'.
Before that impression gains ground, let me assure you that I do work. Sometimes so hard that it doesn't give me time on social media. The last month or so have been spent travelling the highways in India.
Why? To understand how road construction is shaping the India of tomorrow.
Why now? The country's Highways Minister is aiming to deliver 20 kilometres of road every day, starting 1 June 2010. If successful, this will be one of the biggest infrastructure delivery project in India (and probably, the world) in a long time.
Road construction isn't new to the country. It got a big thrust almost a decade back, when the government took on the task of four-laning the Golden Quadrilateral. In case you aren't aware, it is the network of highways connecting Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai.
Our trip was kicked off from Varanasi (Benares) on 21 March 2010 and involved 3000 kilometres of travel by road - passing through Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra - before ending in Mumbai on 9 April 2010.
Apart from an exciting journalistic opportunity, the project allowed me to experience India and generate/showcase content generated for Radio, TV, Web and Print. You can access some of the content here. A word of warning, though - you need to know Hindi.
Before we set out, one of the suggestions was to do a 'Food Map' of sorts - see how the cuisine changes during our journey. Reality hit soon after. Mindful of the heat and risk of an upset tummy, most meals on the road consisted of the following - daal, fried potato, egg bhurji and tandoori roti. Why? Those were the only things cooked on order. The rest may have been sitting in the containers for hours, possibly days.
There is still no concept of motels along the highways, so we stayed in cities along the highway - including the "only air-conditioned hotel between Varanasi and Gaya". This hotel in Dehri-on-Sone was patronised by the officials of the National Highways Agency of India (NHAI) and has seen a boost in business with better roads.
The highways themselves totally impressed me. When planning the trip, Google Maps kept calculating a travel time of 60 kilometres an hour. I kept reducing this to 35-40 kilometres an hour. In reality, we were gliding at 90 kilometres an hour or more. No potholes. No hold-ups. No slow-downs.
Even in Bihar - the state where I was born and seen as one of the laggard states in India - the roads were good. It is another thing that the two toll plazas we passed through can't do business without threat from either Maoists or local toughmen. As luck would have it, the first one had been looted by Maoists just a day before we reached it. The second one was attacked by local toughmen a few days before.
In Jharkhand, carved out of Bihar, we had the best view. The highway snaking through a valley, which was covered in bright-red flowers. As a colleague remarked, "this could be Boston".
The landscape along the highways is absolutely stunning. From Varanasi to Kolkata and from Chennai to Mumbai. Surrounded by lush green fields with paddy crop or sugarcane or some other crop. Houses along the highways are coloured in red and yellow of telecom companies Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Tata Indicom.
There are stark differences too. Varanasi to Kolkata had about five toll plazas. Chennai to Mumbai probably had nearly 25 plazas. Just the Pune-Mumbai Expressway had three toll plazas. The northern corridor (Varanasi-Kolkata) had hardly any overbridges. The southern corridor (Chennai-Mumbai) had one every few kilometres. Those along the southern corridor were better-off financially, compared to those along the northern corridor.
My two key learning from the trip? India is driven by its people - the common man/woman, eager to make good any opportunity that shows up. Examples of this were people selling coconut oil, sugarcane juice, watermelon juice, car and truck decorations or other such things along the highways. Or the guy who set up an STD, Fax and Internet business, just a few yards from a State Transport check-point. He knows that hundreds of truckers pass through the check-point and likely to be missing a crucial bit of documentation. Fax allows these truckers to escape bribing the cops and a scanned copy through email completely nails it.
The other is the conflict over land. For the lakhs who have known farming as the only activity, the acquisition of land for roads and factories and other industrial units is unsettling. If you are marginal farmer, there is nothing to sustain your family once the land goes. Your next generation isn't interesting in agriculture and its dependence on the vagaries of nature. So even if you have the land, there aren't very many to work on it.
The project involved 21 consecutive days of travelling, working, staying the night and moving on. We returned last weekend and I have been taking some rest and spending time with the little one.
About that, in the next post.............hopefully, not after a break of five weeks ;-)
PS: Will add photos to this post later!!
