Strangers to haste

We know time is relative. So,apparently,is timeliness. In India,where building projects usually drag on for small eternities,the Delhi Metro was that unique thing an ambitious infrastructure initiative that met successive targets bang on time,and still delivered a classy product. It was not just the shiny,spacious new subway that made Delhi proud; it was the no-fuss punctuality and professionalism of the project itself tangible proof that here was another kind of work ethic that we could claim as our own.

But evidently,there are enough who are nervous and suspicious of this ordinary feat. That explains the sudden visibility of I-always-suspected-something-was-wrong opinions in Indias national discussion. This is dangerous,and backward-looking. It might be easy to fall back into viewing pre-set,perfectly reasonable time-frames as freakish impositions,but that is hardly going to aid the infrastructure-building process. All over the world,and in India,elaborate construction tasks have been undertaken and completed exactly as planned on paper. In Dubai,their underground railway system is being completed at an even faster rate and nobody expects it to be substandard. After all,Indians should know,from unhappy experience,that an infrastructure project is hardly likely to have impeccable outcomes simply because it was lingered over. Shoddy work is shoddy work,regardless of how much time is poured into it. In modern project management,scheduling goals,keeping tight control on budgets,and ensuring quality are all inter-related,and all considerations must be met for the work to be deemed successful. So in fact,chances are,a project that is casual about time is likely to be lax about budgets and,perhaps,less committed to excellence. So,when we see a project that is delayed,we should not celebrate it as business-as-usual; we should be asking: why is this delayed? And what else does it imply? Thats what was missing in the fanfare that accompanied the inauguration of the Bandra-Worli Sealink.

India needs to radically ramp up infrastructure,and it had better get cracking if the 70,000 kilometres of roads and bridges and all its various metro projects are to materialise in the next five years. Setting up an imagined inverse relation between speed and safety does no favours to either,besides being counterproductive and demoralising.