[alephnerd]

> I see at least 4 stations daily where there has been literally 0 progress in the past few months

Where do you live? Delhi Metro has been quietly expanding rapidly over the past decade, and you can see fairly constant construction and execution. Same with the Gurgaon Metro.

If you are in Bangalore, its metro was a victim of the Siddarmiah-Shivakumar rivalry (Siddaramaiah backed Mysore and Mangalore at the expense of Bangalore to undercut Shivakumar who has significant investments in Bangalore).

> Until land issue is resolved...

This is the biggest timesink for any Indian infrastructure project. Eminent Domain is basically impossible in India under the LARR, which has constantly delayed infra projects across India.

[porridgeraisin]

In some way, it works out. Because of LARR being the way it is, the system descends into things being built on politician owned land and them pocketing the money, or politicians buying up land near an upcoming project where they know LA is done. While that sounds bad, overall this leads to positive infra development. Much better than the alternative of a principled politician who doesn't indulge in such corruption, but due to the inherent difficulty of LA also gets nothing done. Also considering the politicians are voted for, you also get a little bit of alignment to public interest. I.e Mr. X knows he can campaign on a sports center in the corner there without worrying about LARR on the existing old office building - his brother owns it.

Of course this is not business friendly at all... And you end up needing SEZs and special "Foo Cities" for land acquisition to even be remotely feasible for Foo companies. But hey atleast SEZs/special cities don't face the same problems.

[alephnerd]

It slows down SEZ creation as well, becuase an SEZ needs land, which forces state planning commissions to deal with the LARR headache, but at least it's state governments that are facing the headache instead of businesses.

It also prevents the development of mass dormitories for migrant workers in factories, which is the de facto model adopted across Asia.

> the system descends into things being built on politician owned land and them pocketing the money, or politicians buying up land near an upcoming project where they know LA is done

It works until it doesn't, as can be seen with Bangalore because of the Siddaramiah (Mysore) versus Shivakumar (Bangalore) rivalry, or Panchkula whenever Haryana got a BJP CM because former CM Hooda had significant land interests in Panchkula.

---

Eminent domain and "bulldozer raj" might be undemocratic, but it's what helped Urban China clean up in the early 2010s [0][1], when it was in similar shoes to India today. So did South Korea in the 2000s to present [2][3]; Japan in the 1980s to 2000s [4]; and Taiwan in the 1990s to 2010s [5][6].

Urban villages, abadis, bastis, jhuggis, and other informal settlements should be demolished and expropriated to development authorities if India wishes to replicate the Asian model.

Edit: can't reply

> From my weak knowledge of asian countries, I think they took up, loosely speaking, individualistic capitalism

Not really. The main difference was light authoritarianism. India has too much democracy at the local level, where any wannabe neta can block a project by building a Mandir/Masjid or naarabazing "laal salam" or "Jai bhim".

When demolitions and urban renewal projects are executed in China, Korea, Taiwan, or Japan the full might of the system is used to push it through. No PILs or human interest media stories slow down those demolitions and urban renewals. If they need to crack heads or break a few legs, they will.

India under Indira used to be able to execute at such frequency, but then the counter-reaction in the 1980s and 1990s led to India neutering it's eminent domain laws.

[0] - https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/201...

[1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk46cwSCkTs

[2] - https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-feb-09-fg-korea...

[3] - https://www.listentothecity.org/Resisting-Seoul-s-brutal-apa...

[4] - https://www.toshiseibi.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/documents/d/toshise...

[5] - https://www.taiwantoday.tw/print/Environment/Taiwan-Review/2...

[6] - https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2013/05/21/...

[porridgeraisin]

In tamil nadu atleast, building housing for workers nearby the workplace is not the part that causes issues. The way it typically happens is that the business bears the costs, and at the least gets to do the maintenance contract themselves. And the state government provides security (especially when its a lot of women workers) and other utility services. Fairly smooth. The issue primarily is in the earlier negotiation and things like subsidies.

> SEZ dealing with SARR, but atleast its the state governments that face the headache and not the businesses

Can't underestimate the benefit of this difference, it's massive.

> It works until it doesn't

Yep, the failure modes are also of the ugly kind.

> Urban villages, abadis, bastis, jhuggis, and other informal settlements should be demolished and expropriated to development authorities if India wishes to replicate the Asian model.

I don't think we will replicate that model. I am not entirely sure what the model will be, since it's extremely unique. From my weak knowledge of asian countries, I think they took up, loosely speaking, individualistic capitalism, way more than I see among indians, income level and opportunity cost held equal.

I haven't yet seen an explanation for this, and the easy ones (e.g language, community) don't hold up to what I have seen.

I mean even most slums these days don't really have dirt poor people living in them. Dismantling it is not something the state can do and then just ignore the "powerless slum dweller" The people who used to live in the slums in the 70s decided to keep it that way (since they know the land is worth millions) and live in a standard apartment in a standard neighbourhood and treat the slum land as generational wealth. If you bulldozed it you will have money and lawyers coming at you. Not to mention they use tactics like building small temples and/or local hero memorials. So demolishing it becomes a news item on top of that. The new batch of city immigrants then stay in the actual slum asbestos houses, but after cities expanded most of them don't _really_ stay there. Some are also managed as a tourist attraction which leads to, let's say, artificial occupation. The problem with it is that it's forced, but that's another conversation.

It's the same with most urban issues - it only gets solved when the people (or more precisely, the swing voters) get rich enough to implicitly solve it. Electricity became better in TN only when majority of rural people became dependent on the mixer-grinder for making breakfast+lunch to take to work for husband and wife, all in the morning, enabling new behaviour. Until then they didn't really care if electricity went off. Note that city dwellers dont matter as much in elections, and less so back then. Flood management became much better since vardah was the first time majority of houses actually started having valuable things that get damaged! Before that, rural households simply kept their jewellery in the loft and moved to higher grounds. Only the urban dwellers actually suffered. Roads and storm-water mgmt became better only after most people started owning two-wheelers. It's still bad, but not as bad.

This is of course much slower, but there is also some surety to it. If there is a real incentive backing it, it ends up being executed better (by govt execution quality standards). And where I have seen it happen in front of my eyes in a rural town I frequent (now quite well-equipped I admit), it gets executed with a certain "fear of next elections" that I personally enjoy.

One interesting tidbit: of all things, internet connectivity is one such thing today. All rural households depend on it to such a degree that they would hanker more if "data is not there" versus even water not being there. Have observed people seeing water connections having issues, and temporarily reverting to the decade-ago norm of fetching it from a nearby pump with pots and mostly just... accepting it. But they go complain the same day when "data" goes out. To be fair, they use it for almost everything and not just leisure like we urban dwellers do, so it's understandable, but still.

[alephnerd]

> From my weak knowledge of asian countries, I think they took up, loosely speaking, individualistic capitalism

Not really based on my personal experience on the ground.

The main difference was light authoritarianism. India has too much democracy at the local level, where any wannabe neta can block a project by building a Mandir/Masjid or naarabazi-ing "laal salam" or "Jai bhim".

When demolitions and urban renewal projects are executed in China, Korea, Taiwan, or Japan the full might of the system is used to push it through. No PILs or human interest media stories slow down those demolitions and urban renewals. If they need to crack heads or break a few legs, they will.

India under Indira used to be able to execute at such frequency, but then the counter-reaction in the 1980s and 1990s led to India neutering it's eminent domain laws.

TN historically worked because if I wanted a factory built, I knew who to call in the DMK and they would get land and permitting completed in a single window. It's the same in Telangana, Andhra, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Haryana. UP and Chhattisgarh have also started to operate in that manner too. You used to be able to do that in Karnataka but the politics changed in 2021.

[porridgeraisin]

> The main difference was light authoritarianism. India has too much democracy at the local level, where any wannabe neta can block a project

Makes sense. In some ways, the opposite problem also exists. The municipalities dont have much money/power and are de-facto just a branch of the state govt and a neglected one at that. Cause of many urban infra issues.

> TN historically worked because if I wanted a factory built, I knew who to call in the DMK and they would get land and permitting completed in a single window

Yep, this is the kind of thing I alluded to up-thread.