In a continuous thread of news from India, this week had two stories, strangely similar, yet very different. It’s about infrastructure. This growing world power has the population to thrive and the means to do so, yet how the government chooses to spend its money is incredibly interesting considering the rate of poverty. Recently the government has declared the construction of a new highway in India, going from Mumbai to Ahmedabad. While this highway will do some good- reducing travel time from 8 to 2 hours- It will end up doing more harm in the long run. Farmers in India are having their land taken, getting notices of acquisition, but for these people their farm is their whole livelihood. There have been protests, but nothing is being done about it so the women of these farms are taking the 28 hour journey to New Delhi to protest. Which isn’t just dangerous because of the climate for women in India, but since they’re leaving during harvest season they are risking their families lives as well. The country also fails to address the droughts that have been happening in these areas, and giving no helping hands. This particular article brings me back to one from a few weeks ago, regarding the world’s largest statue. In the building of that they kicked out hundreds of native people living there, making them basically displaced peoples. It seems there’s a trend for trying to improve India as a tourist destination but not as a country as a whole. The building block for any country, before it can move up is to have food, a solid source to feed it’s people, but how is India going to keep feeding it’s people when at every chance they get they kick them off their farms. The only good infrastructure India has been doing is mending it’s rocky relationship with Pakistan by creating the “Corridor of Peace”. A passage between two Sikh temples, one in Pakistan and one in India. The road is being built so that religious pilgrimages can be accomplished with ease, without hassle at borders. With the relationship between Pakistan and India this is definitely a stepping stone between the two countries, but if India really wants to succeed and have a larger sphere of influence they’ll have to mend their relationship with their own people first.
