Wheels of fortune!

Mysore is about 130km (~80 miles) from Bangalore. Almost a sister city, except that it takes 3 hours to travel by road or rail! The fastest train we have takes about 2 hours to cover the 130 km and the slowest one takes a tad over 4 hours to cover the same distance.

These are the British era wheels! Overworked, abused, but never upgraded! Transport is the engine of commerce. Any long range road or rail project sharply boosts the GDP – initially because of the investment in the infrastructure and subsequently because of the increase in commerce.

China knows this. Just consider the newly launched high speed train from Beijing to Guangzhou, the world’s longest high-speed rail link. “The 2,298-km line cuts the journey time from more than 20 hours to around 8 hours and connects 28 cities”.

We have too much government, but not enough grey matter or will to stem corruption and move the country forward. That, however, doesn’t stop us from making vocal calls to our neighbors to become under-developed as well!!

“The China-India business relation has matured in the last decade but a wide trade deficit in favour of Beijing needs to be addressed by Beijing for the relationship to develop further”, Indian ambassador has said”.

Theirs is the wheels of fortune. Ours, the politics of despair!