Uploaded May 2017 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
India's $90 billion Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor is one of the most ambitious, expensive endeavors in human history. But the project that will change the lives of the most people is the construction of hundreds of thousands of kilometers of paved roads.
Subscribe to TDC: youtube.com/TheDailyConversation
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Twitter: twitter.com/thedailyconvo
Past TDC video on the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor:
youtube.com/watch?v=2xTuj3vOfkA
Video by Bryce Plank and Robin West
Main information sources:
theguardian.com/travel/2015/jan/17/india-roads-expressways-delhi-agra#img-1
qz.com/634718/why-indias-ambitious-13-billion-roads-and-highways-plan-might-remain-a-pipe-dream
cnbc.com/2017/04/24/wanted-investors-to-upgrade-indias-roads.html
wikiwand.com/en/National_Highways_Development_Project
Music:
"Shanti theme (TDC remix)"
Some footage courtesy of Aneesh Arora:
youtube.com/watch?v=CB5yxw3cUjI
Script:
India loves megaprojects. The country’s $90 billion Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor is one of the most ambitious, expensive endeavors in human history. Completing 1,500 kilometers of new railway and more than 20 brand new cities will set the stage for India to become a manufacturing superpower in the next two decades. It’s so important I made a video all about it a couple years ago, it’s linked below. Now, the corridor may be vital to India’s future economy, but it’s not the project that will deliver the largest day-to-day improvement in quality of life. Neither will a new mega-airport under construction in Mumbai, or World One—the largest residential tower in the world, or even a 500 km high speed rail line planned for India’s west coast.
No, the project Indians need most is more basic than all that: it’s hundreds of thousands of kilometers of paved roads.
Like the rest of the world, the Indian people have fallen in love with driving. But there currently aren’t enough reliable highways to hold all the cars in a country of 1.3 billion people and growing.
The good news is that the Indian government has learned one of the key economic lessons of modern history: that the not-so-secret ingredient of America’s dominance over the last half century is our vast network of well-maintained streets and highways. Roads allow us to move ourselves — and all of our goods — fluidly from city to city, from fields to towns to air and sea ports, and beyond.
China learned this lesson a while ago. They’ve spent tens of billions of dollars on roadways over the past two decades as their economy boomed. Now that its transportation infrastructure is maturing, the Chinese are positioned for rapid development.
India wants to follow the same blueprint and is in the midst of a sustained, years-long, multi-tens of billions of dollars megaproject to do just that. India has about the same population as China, but double the density. Get this, of the five most-densely populated cities in the world with more than four million residents, four of them are in India, including the planet’s most crowded megacity, Mumbai.
So with much less land to work with, India’s challenge will be expanding, modernizing, and widening its existing network of roads, which, on the plus side, is already quite extensive. On the downside, 40% of it is dirt. Without good roads, the country is less unified because its people and goods can’t move around freely enough, especially to and from rural areas.
One of the new roads in the megaproject that’s already completed is a $2B expressway that slashed the travel time between Delhi to Agra by up to four hours. But barbed wire fencing all along the route keeps it clear of the people and slow-moving vehicles that crowd the rest of India’s roads, and high tolls mean it's used only for the rich.
Challenges like this will need to be addressed and overcome by the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who’s a big fan of megaprojects, and has maintained his commitment to the ambitious goal of completing 18,500 kilometers of controlled-access highway. One of the main obstacles to achieving this vision is that the megaproject suffers from chronic underfunding and the disappointment of only reaching about half its construction goals, year-after-year.
Compare this to the way the Chinese operate. As an authoritarian country, a single political party controls the entire government, allowing it to push projects through and spend money as it pleases, sometimes in a brutally efficient way.
But while China, India’s continental rival, may have leapt ahead in its rate of completion of a mega-network of highways, it has yet to face the inevitable reckoning of a messy transition to democracy.
With a people who are much freer, on this front, the Indians are miles ahead of the Chinese. Now, they just need to build themselves enough open road so their economy can hit top speed.
India's $90 billion Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor is one of the most ambitious, expensive endeavors in human history. But the project that will change the lives of the most people is the construction of hundreds of thousands of kilometers of paved roads.
Subscribe to TDC: youtube.com/TheDailyConversation
Facebook: facebook.com/thedailyconversation
Twitter: twitter.com/thedailyconvo
Past TDC video on the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor:
youtube.com/watch?v=2xTuj3vOfkA
Video by Bryce Plank and Robin West
Main information sources:
theguardian.com/travel/2015/jan/17/india-roads-expressways-delhi-agra#img-1
qz.com/634718/why-indias-ambitious-13-billion-roads-and-highways-plan-might-remain-a-pipe-dream
cnbc.com/2017/04/24/wanted-investors-to-upgrade-indias-roads.html
wikiwand.com/en/National_Highways_Development_Project
Music:
"Shanti theme (TDC remix)"
Some footage courtesy of Aneesh Arora:
youtube.com/watch?v=CB5yxw3cUjI
Script:
India loves megaprojects. The country’s $90 billion Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor is one of the most ambitious, expensive endeavors in human history. Completing 1,500 kilometers of new railway and more than 20 brand new cities will set the stage for India to become a manufacturing superpower in the next two decades. It’s so important I made a video all about it a couple years ago, it’s linked below. Now, the corridor may be vital to India’s future economy, but it’s not the project that will deliver the largest day-to-day improvement in quality of life. Neither will a new mega-airport under construction in Mumbai, or World One—the largest residential tower in the world, or even a 500 km high speed rail line planned for India’s west coast.
No, the project Indians need most is more basic than all that: it’s hundreds of thousands of kilometers of paved roads.
Like the rest of the world, the Indian people have fallen in love with driving. But there currently aren’t enough reliable highways to hold all the cars in a country of 1.3 billion people and growing.
The good news is that the Indian government has learned one of the key economic lessons of modern history: that the not-so-secret ingredient of America’s dominance over the last half century is our vast network of well-maintained streets and highways. Roads allow us to move ourselves — and all of our goods — fluidly from city to city, from fields to towns to air and sea ports, and beyond.
China learned this lesson a while ago. They’ve spent tens of billions of dollars on roadways over the past two decades as their economy boomed. Now that its transportation infrastructure is maturing, the Chinese are positioned for rapid development.
India wants to follow the same blueprint and is in the midst of a sustained, years-long, multi-tens of billions of dollars megaproject to do just that. India has about the same population as China, but double the density. Get this, of the five most-densely populated cities in the world with more than four million residents, four of them are in India, including the planet’s most crowded megacity, Mumbai.
So with much less land to work with, India’s challenge will be expanding, modernizing, and widening its existing network of roads, which, on the plus side, is already quite extensive. On the downside, 40% of it is dirt. Without good roads, the country is less unified because its people and goods can’t move around freely enough, especially to and from rural areas.
One of the new roads in the megaproject that’s already completed is a $2B expressway that slashed the travel time between Delhi to Agra by up to four hours. But barbed wire fencing all along the route keeps it clear of the people and slow-moving vehicles that crowd the rest of India’s roads, and high tolls mean it's used only for the rich.
Challenges like this will need to be addressed and overcome by the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who’s a big fan of megaprojects, and has maintained his commitment to the ambitious goal of completing 18,500 kilometers of controlled-access highway. One of the main obstacles to achieving this vision is that the megaproject suffers from chronic underfunding and the disappointment of only reaching about half its construction goals, year-after-year.
Compare this to the way the Chinese operate. As an authoritarian country, a single political party controls the entire government, allowing it to push projects through and spend money as it pleases, sometimes in a brutally efficient way.
But while China, India’s continental rival, may have leapt ahead in its rate of completion of a mega-network of highways, it has yet to face the inevitable reckoning of a messy transition to democracy.
With a people who are much freer, on this front, the Indians are miles ahead of the Chinese. Now, they just need to build themselves enough open road so their economy can hit top speed.
![How America Changed Under Obama [A Data Analysis]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/y3uuX8Jtqxw/mqdefault.jpg "How America Changed Under Obama [A Data Analysis]
A data-driven look at how the U.S. changed under the presidency of Barack Obama.
FB for daily news: http://www.facebook.com/thedailyconversation
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Subscribe to TDC: https://www.youtube.com/TheDailyConversation/
Data courtesy of Pew Research Center: http://pewrsr.ch/2jzFOHy
Researched, written, narrated and produced by Bryce Plank
Video edited by Robin West
Music: Particles Unfolding by Glimpse: https://soundcloud.com/glimpse_official/particles_unfolding
Electro Sketch by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/?keywords=electro+sketch&Search=Search
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
Script:
In 2008, Barack Obama was the change candidate. This is a data-driven look at how much America transformed during his eight years as our President. Pause or rewind the video if you need more time with any of the data.
After spiking during the Great Recession, the unemployment rate is below 5% today.
And the stock market has more than doubled.
Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, plunged the percentage of adults without health insurance to the lowest level in history.
While the share of income going to the top 1% has continued to increase, average Americans saw the biggest jump in their household income ever in 2015, and the biggest drop in poverty since the great society programs of the 1960’s.
The violent crime rate is down almost 20% from when Obama took office.
America’s image abroad was lifted as President Obama turned away from the policies of George W. Bush and toward a more active pursuit of diplomacy to solve problems.
Today, there are less than 15,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, compared to the 175,000 when he took office.
But this was coupled with Americans themselves becoming more wary of international engagement.
On energy, the Obama administration has reduced carbon emissions by 9.4%, greatly expanded wind and solar power, and cut America’s dependence on foreign oil by more than half.
In 2015, for the first time since at least 1980, the number of inmates in federal prisons actually declined.
8 states have now legalized marijuana and - for first time - a majority of Americans overall support legalization.
A majority of Americans also favor the Supreme Court’s ruling that essentially legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
Culturally, the biggest change came when Apple released the first iPhone during Obama’s campaign for the democratic nomination in 2007. In the decade since, smartphone use has exploded and about half of all Americans now own a tablet too.
But all that technology has led to a constant stream of stories and images of violence and victimization, especially at the hands of police, seen all over the social media feeds of many Americans, that’s led to a widespread perception that race relations have deteriorated.
Millennials are now the nation’s largest living generation and the biggest potential voting block.
For the first time in 2013, the majority of newborn babies were racial or ethnic minorities, and a record-high 12% of newlyweds married someone of a different race.
Despite some people’s perception, the past seven years has seen little change in the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, there was actually a net loss of over 100,000 immigrants who went back to Mexico.
The biggest religious trend during Obama’s presidency is the rise of those claiming no religion at all a group now making up a quarter of the population, and 35% of millennials.
As you can see from President Obama’s approval ratings among democrats and republicans, modern America has never been so divided along partisan lines.
Far more democrats than republicans now say immigrants strengthen the country; and when it comes to guns, far more republicans now think we should prioritize gun rights over gun control.
For various reasons, both democrats and republicans have much less faith in government. Most Americans didn’t think the government’s actions after the financial crisis helped them.
On national security, after the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, for the first time since 9/11, the government’s job rating on terrorism turned negative.
And, driven by the campaign of Donald Trump, Republicans have suddenly become anti-free trade and globalization. As you can see, Democrats’ views have remained roughly the same.
Only one-third of Americans used social media in 2008, but by 2015 that rate was 75%.
Obama was also the first Internet video president, as this media genre came of age during his time in office. YouTube now has over a billion users.
In 2016, more American adults learned about the presidential election through social media than through print newspapers, with seven-in-ten getting their news through a mobile device.")
