Of Infrsatructure and Capital Statements

( .. furthering the course of discussion on the pathetic quality of roads in India, this was a post that i had written in reply to Raju Narisetti's (editor in Chief, Mint) editorial piece on pathetic road infrastructure in India. Click http://blogs.livemint.com/blogs/romanticrealist/archive/2008/09/01/killer-roads-in-india-and-rethinking-the-death-penalty.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage for the story)

Hi Raju

Off all things, i cant imagine why you would have to toil in some obscure hill way, a Highway 58 or something. Did you miss the roads outside your home/office/club/mall/market etc? If my memory does me fair justise, the utility of tax payers money diminishes by exponential degrees as you move out of Delhi/or the state capitals.And i am still talking Delhi! We dont have a concept of time value of Money in India else the amount that we lost in the traffic jams and on roads would be incomprehensible. It takes only one good monsoon to show how poorly off we are in the quality of road infrastructure. As far as your China comparison is concerned, the common perception of India's GDP growth is that we loose 2% growth opportunity because of infrastructural shortages and shortcomings (whether be road, electricity, water, or any other). So when India was scorching at 9% GDP growth, the common perception was we could actually do a 11% and we were loosing 2% to these bottlenecks. I wonder if China works on discounting their infrastructure. Responsibilibity and accountability go hand in hand: Thats as far as i understand is a universal principle. Universal, right till about it steps to the Indian Policy makers. This may sound crazy and indeed as a action point radical , but who audits the government. Are there any scorecards for the governments and policy makers. Inside the parliament, its just as good as a thief judging the theivery of another. Why cant we have a group of business icons/media people/environment specialists/economists/ social activists, take a yearly account of the policies and the governments? A public death penalty is not as much the answer as an answerable system is. In a mature world, i would vote for rational assessments instead of radical penalties.

Thanks

Regards