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Mile by Mile, India Paves a Smoother Road to Its Future
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Dec 03, 2005 07:59pm |
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| Category | Profile |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Monday, December 5, 2005 01:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By AMY WALDMAN
Published: December 4, 2005
NEW DELHI, India - In the middle of the old Grand Trunk Road a temple sits under a peepul tree. The surrounding highway is being widened to four lanes, and vehicles barrel along either side. But the temple and tree thwart even greater speed, and a passing contractor says they soon will be removed.
Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction, thinks otherwise. She is angry, say the colorfully garbed women massing in the holy tree's dappled shade. As evidence, they point to one woman's newly pockmarked face and other mysterious ailments recently visited on their nearby village, Jagdishrai. They have tried to convince Kali that the tree and temple devoted to her must go, but they have failed. Now they have no choice but to oppose the removal, too, even if they must block the road to do it.
Goddess versus man, superstition versus progress, the people versus the state - mile by mile, India is struggling to modernize its national highway system, and in the process, itself.
The Indian government has begun a 15-year project to widen and pave some 40,000 miles of narrow, decrepit national highways, with the first leg, budgeted at $6.25 billion, to be largely complete by next year. It amounts to the most ambitious infrastructure project since independence in 1947 and the British building of the subcontinent's railway network the century before.
The effort echoes the United States' construction of its national highway system in the 1920's and 1950's. |
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