The recent decision of the Tamil Nadu government led by Chief Minister Joseph K Vijay to scrap a new airport at Parandur near Chennai has, as expected, drawn a storm of criticism from the pro-development lobby, which has likened the move to economic self-immolation. It’s not so much the business case for the project (the number of passengers it will serve, the volume of exports and imports it will facilitate, or the transport network it will create) but its scale, which seems to have caught the attention of even those sitting on the fence: an airport that could cost Rs 27,400 crore, possibly more, and be spread over 5,846 acres.
This fetishization of mega-infrastructure projects – be it the Greater Nicobar Island Development Project, the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway or countless other jaw-dropping endeavors – is not just an individual failure. This is a national epidemic that appears to be in our collective DNA. Bent Flyvbjerg, a Danish academic and one of the world’s leading researchers on megaprojects, explains this penchant for large infrastructure projects with his four “sublimes”: political elevation, backed by prestige, fame and political legacy; technological excellence, driven by a passion for the biggest, the latest, the fastest and the most technically impressive; economic greatness fueled by the huge flows of money and business that megaprojects generate; and aesthetic elevation stemming from the appeal of impressive, monumental projects.
But knowing what drives the frenzy of major infrastructure projects is only one part of the equation. The more important question is whether this shiny, expensive infrastructure expands people’s real freedoms. And it’s impossible to answer this question without drawing on Professor Amartya Sen’s work on human performance: the idea that the value of resources and objects lies not just in their existence, but in what they enable people to do and be.
This is what we have tried to address in this special issue. For whom is the infrastructure being created? Is this for the elite or the average user? Who will decide what infrastructure will be built? Who pays the price? Will the facilities we built help women travel safely at night? Will they allow the street vendor to earn a living or will they enable the migrant worker to find affordable work? Are they equipping our cities and towns to withstand extreme heat and catastrophic flooding? Is it possible to deal with waste without simply moving the problem somewhere else?
As Professor Jayati Ghosh notes in her editorial in this issue, the answers to some of these questions are not always reassuring: “The problems with recent infrastructure development in India are similar to those with broader economic and social policy over the last decade or more: an obsession with form and display rather than substance; focusing on short-term benefits rather than building for the long term; a tendency towards grandiose and highly visible interventions rather than systematic, firm and careful policies that would provide sustainable and inclusive infrastructure for the country and its people.”
And it is this obsession with spectacle that has caused us to lose sight of a seemingly mundane but fundamental principle of development: putting basic human needs at the center. What’s the point of chasing the dream of a bullet train if simply walking on city roads remains a difficult and often dangerous task? The fact that it took the Supreme Court to declare the right to walk on safe, marked footpaths a fundamental right is a telling commentary on how far our infrastructure priorities have strayed from people’s everyday needs.
In this special issue, covering topics as diverse as subaltern migration and the lessons it holds for policymakers, failed future city designs that have relegated smartness to footnotes, and the need to guard against the creation of a patriarchal urban spatial order, we hope to curate the debate and be part of a movement that prioritizes people over physical assets. Happy reading.
