[elangoc]

Exactly. Why is it that the smaller national highways and a few of the biggest airports only got nationalized recently (i.e., the past 2 years)? It's most likely that that the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi temporarily broke the spell of apathetic stupor. (or perhaps this only applies to South India, in which case that would be sad yet telling, since South India is the home to most of India's IT sector.)

India's high population and smaller landmass (--> higher pop dens) requires innovative, planned, coordinated strategies to conserve resources. To say that India is a democracy does not mean that it is a meritocracy. It still seems to be more like a feudal-like hierarchy inherited from the British, which itself was usurped and adapted from the feudal monarchies before. Most post-colonial states wrestle with issues of being too top-down, despotic, nepotistic.

Laws are only really worth anything if they can be adjudicated and enforced. What good is a law that no one respects? Everything is all about institutions and what they do, so celebrating a law might be premature since it's only 1/3 of the entire end goal -- you need the judiciary and the executive on the same page and working, too.