The 3Ts Of Prosperity... All Destroyed!

It is indeed disheartening to hear of the plight of our new private airline companies. They have decided to observe a one-day token strike on August 18. And they want some sort of “bailout” from our The State – and somewhere here I kinda tuned off. This is a disaster.

Note that Air India has just asked for a 20,000 crore rupee bailout.

Transportation is the key. This is another disaster in transportation.

Our The State monopolizes roads and railways – and a flourishing private sector in civil aviation was bound to alter the rules of the game. It is my firm belief that our The State deliberately played spoilsport in order to keep its railways in business. This is precisely the kind of ideas that guide the actions of a “predatory state.” The taxes and other fees added to the airfare are extortionist. They invariably add up to more than the airfare itself! It is as if they do not want more and more Indians – who have never flown – to fly. The “evil eye.”

India desperately needs a Revolution in Transportation. We now have cars; we need highways. On the coast, we need modern boats. In the mountains we need modern cable cars. And we need airways too.

If excellent highways are built, and if good policies guide the growth of private airlines, the railways will be outcompeted: for distances up to 1000 km people will take a modern bus on a modern highway; beyond that, they’ll fly. Only then will our State-owned railways be forced to get its act together. Transport is always “multi-modal” – and all the modes compete.

But that is the India I daydream about.

The harsh reality is that we are moving in precisely the opposite direction – towards a Total Transportation Disaster.

In the capital city, New Delhi, the authorities have assumed that the Metro rail is a substitute for roads; a substitute for cars. They do not think “multi-modal.” They have never heard the saying “every great city sits like a giant spider on its transportation network.” That “all roads led to Rome.” They do not see that the road layout of Connaught Place and the Lutyens’ Bungalow Zone, where they live, is a “hubs-and-spokes” design. The rest of the city, which they laid out, is on the pattern of T-junctions.

Methinks our Central Planners know zilch about Transportation precisely because the “theory” in their heads has nothing to do with either Trade or Towns. Their theory is about self-sufficient village economies. This theory is wrong.

In reality, Trade, Towns and Transportation are the 3Ts of Prosperity.

And these guys have screwed up all three.