System failure

The feeling of dissatisfaction extends across every section of society. Take the major airports, for example. They don?t cheer you as you depart; or welcome you as you arrive, writes Neeva Jain.

The basis for judging the growth and potential of any country is its GDP. For instance, the US, the second-most competitive economy in the world as per the World Economic Forum, is growing at slightly over 3 per cent, while India, by contrast, is growing at a whopping 8.1 per cent. This is said to be the fastest growth spurt of the last couple of years. On a macro level, there is an innate sense of pride that every Indian must be feeling in their hearts. Yet, on a micro level, there is frustration, lethargy and acceptance of the sub-optimal. This is true, whether you live in a city or even in a small nondescript village.

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The feeling of dissatisfaction extends across every section of society. Take the major airports, for example. They don’t cheer you as you depart; or welcome you as you arrive. The only memories most of us carry of airports are queues, crowds, dilapidated interiors, an innate apathy and grumpy airport officials. Frequent fliers have become used to such deplorable behaviour but what about first-timers flying abroad or foreigners visiting our shores for the first time?

Or, consider the roads of India — the traffic jams and congestion, the snail’s pace at which vehicles move at most times. Delhi’s roads also produce dangerous amounts of pollution; the city has been rated as having the second-highest level of particle pollution in the world. The situation is a lot better now, but we are still creating killer diseases.

The most depressing of all elements, which affects Indians from every socio-economic strata, is the desolate state of electricity in India. This is true whether you reside in the posh locales of Delhi, where your power can often go off for five-six hours, or in India’s heartland, UP, where you are lucky if you get power for five-six hours a day.

Bombay gave us a sense of deja vu. We saw the re-run of a two-year-old movie play in front of us when the commercial capital came to a halt because extra doses of rain induced flooding. We tend to accept such thing as natural calamities, but the truth is that the Bombay problem was man-made. Bombay suffered because of lack of proper drainage and sewage facilities.

The sufferer is always the public at large. It is a Catch-22 situation, where corruption is so rampant at every level of the government that every day, reality impedes companies from functioning in the most efficient manner. Year after year, be it in A+ cities or smaller B and C cities, promises are constantly muttered by local politicians that infrastructure is being given paramount importance. That power problems will be sorted out efficiently and effectively. That last year’s monsoon debacle will not be repeated in the state of Maharashtra. But no pledge is ever kept. And all this, when private capital is willing to finance infrastructure, after the last decade’s experience has shown that investors can actually make good returns by investing in infrastructure.

The problem is that we have been brought up to accept mediocrity. If Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam can do it, surely so can we? If West Asia can do it with Indian labourers, the solution is much nearer than we think.

But to get there, we must expect much more from the system. And not be content with so little.