A Long Way to Go

I was reading an article in Reuters about how India's youth is now "hanging out" in coffee shops in a predominantly tea drinking country.

Offlate a lot of western media has been painting a picture where India is becoming an economic superpower or something like that. I am in the US since June 2004 and I was kind of getting influenced by this whole propaganda.
In February, I went to India on a 2 week vacation. Well..that changed it all.

Some ground realities..
1) Our infrastructure is the worst. Roads are hopeless or do not exist. If they exist they are so conjusted. This does not help foreign companies to open businesses there. What's being done? No Idea. I guess some "decent" work was done during Vajpayee's rule for the golden quadrilateral. But this does not cover intra city roads and small cities, towns and villages

2) Airports: The state of our international airports are worse than the smallest airport in the US. I was so ashamed to see the Chennai International Airport. I came to India expecting that some miracle had taken place that transformed the country. But I was in for the shock of my life.

Dirty Walls from 1970's

Wiring hanging out

Cobwebs

No waiting area or proper receiving area

1950's style counter for Immigration

Chaos outside the aiport arrival area

It was funny that the government announced modernization of Bombay and Delhi airports around the same time. But the leftists were quick to strike and paralyze airport operations across the nation.

3)Government's hesitation to invest more and proactively in infrastructure is the biggest roadblock that India is facing. This is the reality!!

The truth is that we are miles away from becoming a global power or even an asian powerhouse. There are so many things to set right and this government is interested in giving away reservation for OBC's, Muslims, eunuchs and God know what!!!
I think we have a long way to go!!