Driving from Delhi to Jaipur on the Delhi-Jaipur highway, December 17, 2009—The new 10-lane Gurgaon highway, opened a year back, is already at capacity. The first 30 miles. through the industrial suburbs of Delhi, are stop-and-go traffic. The Maruti-Suzuki car factories and Hero-Honda motorcycle factories and their parasitic ecosystem for auto parts manufactures ring the highway. Commercial trucks, many of them dilapidated and overloaded and lumbering along at 15-20 mph, make up two-thirds of the vehicles on the road. There is a murky haze over the highway, and the industries we are passing by and the winter sun feel distant. The trucks have grizzled, unkempt drivers, many with a navigator/helper riding shotgun with his arm hanging out waving on overtaking vehicles, who blast their horns for added caution. Like in America, these trucks are the blood, and the roads the arteries, of the economy. Unlike America, but like many other things in India, they are inefficient, but supported by abundant, therefore low-cost, labor.
Original Article: India’s Innovation Front Lines 2009 (Part 1): Of “Jugaar” and A Quick Recovery from Global Recession | Xconomy
