INFRASTUCTURAL RACE: CHINA A CHEETAH ; INDIA A SQUIRREL

Don’t you find it odd when you read headlines in the newspaper which says china builds a nineteen storey building within 36 hours or a replace a bridge within 43 hours while in India even a project as minute as covering of drains in the city takes over two years or completion of a fly-over in four years!

One of the amazing things in China is how fast everything gets built. If we did things this way in India, we would have high speed rail connecting every town and subways underneath every city. 

I tried to dig in and find about the lapses present in India and why china is so ahead of us in this race while even though both the countries nearly have the same population. 

ADVANTAGES

DISPUTE OVER LAND

The first thing to build any structure is a need for land. That’s the first step towards building one. And the Chinese have a huge advantage of not worrying about the process. The state or better the central authority owns all the land and hence all the legal procedure steps get avoided straight away . However in India we don’t share the same benefit. In case there are any settlements the govt. first needs approval of its ownership and provide adequate compensation along with land for the presiding residents to move. At times these deals are unfair to the citizens and so the delay in acquisition of the land.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

In india if any project is decided to come up it would first be opposed by the sitting environmentalists who would call for its cancellation due to either excessive cutting of trees or violation of any laws for the environment or threat to any flora/fauna species. This at times takes several years to deal and come to terms for both the parties. This however isn’t the case for china as the communist party has the highest authority and thus the final say without worrying about any environmental pain. They just decide where they want to put a train or a road and do it.

POLITICS

There are several members involved from administration point of view to get a bridge/tunnel done and in each step there is a lot of corruption present. Even though the govt. provides sufficient funds to get a project done but the greedy service men look out for their personal benefits and cut own the expense by compromising with the quality of the material or cut short the labour fees. This is absolutely absent in the Chinese regime where strict laws prevent the govt. employee to even think about such an act.

ADVANCED MACHINERY

But then the magic really starts. It is all because they have developed all of this amazing machinery to do it so quickly and efficiently. In India, precast bridge sections would be probably delivered by truck and lifted into place by cranes. In China, they have developed high standard machines which are capable of performing a large number of tasks of lifting placing rolling fitting the things altogether. Such work is replaced either by labour or simplified small machines which take much more time to get the work done.

Even after all of these steps no one can question the Chinese safety standards or the quality they use. It is as high as anyone can find in other parts of the world. Their structures can easily handle the earthquakes and meet all the lines required for clearing the safety marks. The walls are super-insulated, the windows quadruple glazed . Really, if we want to build better infrastructure and more efficient green buildings, we could learn a lot by watching what is going on in China.