The Power Of Ideas

At the 1982 Delhi Asian Games swimming meet, what was more interesting than the swimming itself was the display of nationalist pride amongst various competitors. Intent on breaking world or at least Asian records, China, Japan and South Korea were invariably amongst the top three. While they were being awarded their medals, countries like India, Pakistan and Iran were still flapping about the pool in an effort to complete the race.In Indian eyes the world record was so distant a goal the race was merely an attempt to keep from coming last. To get your feet wet.
For half a century since independence, India has remained away from the world stage, a global backwater, happily complacent in its socialist model. Now, however, the shift of status as a power of some economic consequence has also increased the public's expectation of it in other areas. In sports, in the arts, in scientific endeavour, engineering and infrastructure, the need to be 'world-class', has spurred many into comparisons with China, a country that had similarly been subject to years of ideological isolation and is now pushing into areas of which it had little interest or experience.
In sports as un-Chinese as tennis and golf, Chinese athletes have made a mark. Musicians in China, trained in the western classical tradition, are outperforming European and American soloists in cello, violin, and in opera. The reckless Chinese rush to adapt the western model of the good life is visible everywhere.
While the Chinese leap the scales of existing ideas, the Indian view is still one of renewal and upgrade. To restructure what exists: widen it if it is a road, whitewash if a slum, protect if a monument...Just look at the Indian city. Every year the numbers become more forbidding. Urban housing shortfall went from 30 lakh to 36 lakh last year. Demand for urban transport increased from 65 lakh to 80 lakh. Electricity and water requirement jumped by 30 per cent. Sure, housing projects were built in all Indian towns, buses were added to roads, water supply projects were approved. But not enough. High shortfalls in China, however, were addressed in a complete shift of scale and technology. No longer satisfied with conventional means, China sought a cutting-edge approach suited wholly to Herculean tasks.
Recent work on Chinese infrastructure is both instructive and unconventional. Seventeen bridges are under construction on the Yangtse River. Many of the bridges are conceived with a 100-year maintenance plan built into the design: tunnels allow engineers to observe any fault that may develop over the life of the bridge; electric tramways are used for such observation. A planning that is unprecedented and thorough and, in Indian eyes, inconceivable. Many bridges will break world records for the longest span, the highest tower, the tallest suspension. The value of such a book of records approach is of course another matter; these engineering feats are yet more tangible evidence that Chinese skills have surpassed western ones.
Beijing airport, for instance, has more floor space than Heathrow. Even though presently Chinese air travel demand is low, it has been designed for the next quarter of a century of air travel. By increasing speeds over 400 kmph, Chinese trains deliver more passengers in shorter time spans over greater distances. Two thousand kilometres of track was laid to connect Tibet with the mainland, requiring construction at 15,000 ft high mountain terrain. By contrast, our Kalka-Shimla line built over a century ago is considered both an engineering marvel as well as a heritage masterpiece. Certainly it is both, but by denying the great possibilities of invention and ideas to its many transport problems, India remains an unfortunate bystander.
The fear that any radical approach will be the downgrading of lifestyle has kept us resolutely on the path of increasing carbon pollution and urban chaos. However, dogged pursuit of development at any cost is both unrealistic and unimaginative. Certainly the country's path to material progress for three quarters of a billion people cannot be altered. Yet this one-track approach to prosperity has none of the urges and inclinations expected of a country embarking on such a heroic task: no dreams, no new ideas, no professed aims; no philosophical deviations to chart a different line to affluence; no technical or scientific approach to offer short cuts. In a time of such broad leaps in agricultural science, domestic technology, automotive engineering and industrial design, the application of serious ideas to reinvent Indian lives remains woefully inadequate.
Where would India be were it to resort to an imaginative resolution of its many problems? Would urban transport find a solution in more buses or designing communities where work and home are in the same place? Would smaller cities like Bhopal and Nagpur with relatively lower electric consumption patterns benefit from solar farms? Or port cities like Kochi from wind farms? Could building bylaws in Rajasthan be changed to allow houses to be built underground to take advantage of the desert's ambient temperatures? Can biodegradable cars be made of pulp or waste wood for the relatively low speeds of our towns? Is there a non-polluting bukhari that can keep a homeless family warm without spewing the 30 tonnes of daily carbon in winter? It will take more than good intentions to come up with serious answers.
The writer is an architect.