The Congested Road Ahead

Last week, I traveled from a hotel in downtown Bangalore to the

airport, an 8 km journey that I budget a half to a full hour for, with the city's

terrible traffic. But it was early morning, and the drive took 10 minutes.

I landed in Delhi, and drove myself from the airport to our

office building in Gurgaon. 20 kilometers took 15 minutes on the new eight-lane

NH-8 expressway (the heck with the bizarre 50 kph speed limit).

It was a nice reminder of just how much infrastructure can

change things. Just as the Bombay-Pune expressway, or the Delhi-Noida (DND)

tollway, did.

Especially for a 'globally competitive' industry. India's

services industry spends much money and effort to bridge the gap between global

SLAs and the missing infrastructure at home. Congested roads, power cuts, bandhs,

even riots, have to be planned and compensated for, while delivering global

service levels. Even back home. For instance, the BPO industry's doorstep

pick-up-and-drop norm has few precedents.

Delhi's young suburb of Gurgaon, now a world capital for BPO

services, saw an explosion of prosperity in seven years, driven by young,

high-income BPO and tech employees. The thriving metropolis is a case study in

town planning disaster. Random, uncontrolled growth, no public transport,

traffic chaos, no power, and up ahead: a horror story as water resources get

depleted by hundreds of new office complexes and lakhs of high-consumption

families.

The national capital region (NCR) is crying out for regional

planning. That worked for telecom, but most else is in chaos. Delhi is

collapsing under the weight of NCR traffic, as tech workers work in Gurgaon and

live in Noida or Faridabad, or vice versa.

One hope is big sports events. They push technology adoption

(the soccer world cup and HDTV in Europe, or Cricket 2007 and flat panel TVs in

India) and drive infrastructure in spurts. Take Asiad 1982, or Commonwealth

2010. But Delhi saw no 'big sports' for 28 years in between.

For businesses, tech provides some answers. Audio and

video conferencing are picking up, though they are yet to penetrate many small

and midsize businesses. Telecommuting, working from home, provides another

answer, but a very few companies have managed to get to grips with that.

Things may not get 'better'. We'll find newer roads and

newer answers, just to stay with the same level of experience. Five years ago, I'd

leave my South Delhi home at nine to reach in an hour, because traffic would

build up after that. Now I leave at eight, to reach in an hour.

Like Alice in Wonderland, we have to run faster and faster just

to stay where we are.

Prasanto K Roy



pkr@cybermedia.co.in