Indians are like this only... They can never keep a schedule.
India farmers rebel against Modi’s bullet train
The route for India’s first bullet train, a $15bn flagship project in the government’s drive to upgrade national infrastructure, goes directly through Navinbhai Patel’s house.
Outside the mango farmer’s modest home in Valsad, a village in western Gujarat state, authorities have left stone and chalk markers to indicate the path where trains will run on their 530km journey between Mumbai and Gujarat’s industrial hub of Ahmedabad.
But Mr Patel, 40, is unwilling to surrender his home and four acres of farmland to the project, backed by Japanese capital and technology in one of India’s biggest international deals in recent years.
“My family has lived here for four generations,” said Mr Patel, whose household is one of 693 in Valsad district alone whose land will be required for the bullet train. “I’m not moving.”
While the bullet train project is a totem of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to revitalise the Indian economy, its struggles around land acquisition — a perennial problem for capital investment in the country — reflect how hard that mission is proving.
The government is pushing to launch the route by 2022, in time for the 75th anniversary of national independence, but nearly all the 1,400 hectares of land required have yet to be acquired.
Most of that land is in Mr Modi’s home state of Gujarat, where he was chief minister for 13 years. The state’s main farmers’ association alleges that the Gujarat government acted illegally when it “maliciously” exempted this project from strict requirements around land acquisition introduced in 2013.
In a lawsuit being heard in the High Court of Gujarat, the farmers argue the state is offering low prices for their land. The farmers will take the case to India’s Supreme Court if this hearing proves fruitless, said Anand Yagnik, the lawyer leading the case.
The Gujarat government declined to comment. The National High Speed Rail Corporation, the state-owned body building the rail link, said it was “trying to acquire land with consent and with minimum harm to environment and local community”.
By clarifying rules around land acquisition, the 2013 law aimed to draw a line under a chronic problem for capital investment in the country.
In a high-profile case, Tata Motors abandoned plans to build its then hotly anticipated Nano car in West Bengal state, after a long struggle to overcome local resistance.
The new law has improved the situation for road building, which had been badly held back by land problems, said Ritika Mankar, an economist at Ambit Capital.
The 2016 opening of a 300km expressway between the northern cities of Lucknow and Agra, completed in less than two years, was hailed as an example of the new system’s catalysing impact on big capital projects.
Navinbhai Patel, pictured in his mango orchard in the Gujarat village of Valsad, is among hundreds of farmers resisting government plans to build a bullet train route through their land
The farmers’ lawsuit against Gujarat’s decision threatens to delay progress on the bullet train — and if they win, the state may be forced to offer much higher prices for their land, pushing up a project cost that has already attracted criticism.
Opponents have compared the scheme with another pet project of Mr Modi, which the prime minister will inaugurate on October 31: a 182m statue in Gujarat of independence hero Vallabhbhai Patel, which cost $420m.
The NHSRC said the bullet train project would “help the whole region grow economically”, and would boost India’s broader rail infrastructure by providing a “training ground” for engineers.
But in a country with annual per capita income below $2,000, said D Raghunandan at the Centre for Technology and Development, the projected cost of about $50 to travel between Mumbai and Ahmedabad will be affordable only to the rich — who already have the option of flying between the cities for a comparable price. The money could be better spent, he argued, upgrading India’s creaking rail infrastructure.
“This is a vanity project to show how India is marching into the future and all that stuff — it’s purely about prestige,” Mr Raghunandan said.
Defenders of the project said its cost was reduced by cheap funding from Japan, which provided a $15bn loan to be repaid over 50 years with an annual interest of 0.1 per cent.
Farmers and villagers, who might have to relocate from the areas along the proposed route of the Mumbai Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor project, shout slogans during a protest in Mumbai in May 2018 © AFP
High-speed rail is a much loved symbol of modernity in Japan and, after losing out to China for a similar project in Indonesia, the deal with India in 2015 is a prized victory for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Japanese officials expected land acquisition to be the main obstacle but hoped that Mr Modi's sponsorship of the project would smooth its path.
“We need iconic demonstration projects,” said Vinayak Chatterjee of Feedback Infra, a consultancy, saying that New Delhi’s metro system prompted a race among other cities to emulate it. “We are living with a 19th-century railway system, with poor service and slow speeds. This will transform Indian Railways into a 21st-century service provider.”
The farmers in Valsad are unconvinced by such arguments, and their resistance may push up the cost and completion time of one of the government’s most keenly watched initiatives, Mr Chatterjee said.
“In project after project, land acquisition problems slow down development,” he said. “That’s the trade-off we’ve decided to live with, because we believe in our democracy.”
Additional reporting by Robin Harding in Tokyo
India farmers rebel against Modi’s bullet train
The route for India’s first bullet train, a $15bn flagship project in the government’s drive to upgrade national infrastructure, goes directly through Navinbhai Patel’s house.
Outside the mango farmer’s modest home in Valsad, a village in western Gujarat state, authorities have left stone and chalk markers to indicate the path where trains will run on their 530km journey between Mumbai and Gujarat’s industrial hub of Ahmedabad.
But Mr Patel, 40, is unwilling to surrender his home and four acres of farmland to the project, backed by Japanese capital and technology in one of India’s biggest international deals in recent years.
“My family has lived here for four generations,” said Mr Patel, whose household is one of 693 in Valsad district alone whose land will be required for the bullet train. “I’m not moving.”
While the bullet train project is a totem of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to revitalise the Indian economy, its struggles around land acquisition — a perennial problem for capital investment in the country — reflect how hard that mission is proving.
The government is pushing to launch the route by 2022, in time for the 75th anniversary of national independence, but nearly all the 1,400 hectares of land required have yet to be acquired.
Most of that land is in Mr Modi’s home state of Gujarat, where he was chief minister for 13 years. The state’s main farmers’ association alleges that the Gujarat government acted illegally when it “maliciously” exempted this project from strict requirements around land acquisition introduced in 2013.
In a lawsuit being heard in the High Court of Gujarat, the farmers argue the state is offering low prices for their land. The farmers will take the case to India’s Supreme Court if this hearing proves fruitless, said Anand Yagnik, the lawyer leading the case.
The Gujarat government declined to comment. The National High Speed Rail Corporation, the state-owned body building the rail link, said it was “trying to acquire land with consent and with minimum harm to environment and local community”.
By clarifying rules around land acquisition, the 2013 law aimed to draw a line under a chronic problem for capital investment in the country.
In a high-profile case, Tata Motors abandoned plans to build its then hotly anticipated Nano car in West Bengal state, after a long struggle to overcome local resistance.
The new law has improved the situation for road building, which had been badly held back by land problems, said Ritika Mankar, an economist at Ambit Capital.
The 2016 opening of a 300km expressway between the northern cities of Lucknow and Agra, completed in less than two years, was hailed as an example of the new system’s catalysing impact on big capital projects.
Navinbhai Patel, pictured in his mango orchard in the Gujarat village of Valsad, is among hundreds of farmers resisting government plans to build a bullet train route through their land
The farmers’ lawsuit against Gujarat’s decision threatens to delay progress on the bullet train — and if they win, the state may be forced to offer much higher prices for their land, pushing up a project cost that has already attracted criticism.
Opponents have compared the scheme with another pet project of Mr Modi, which the prime minister will inaugurate on October 31: a 182m statue in Gujarat of independence hero Vallabhbhai Patel, which cost $420m.
The NHSRC said the bullet train project would “help the whole region grow economically”, and would boost India’s broader rail infrastructure by providing a “training ground” for engineers.
But in a country with annual per capita income below $2,000, said D Raghunandan at the Centre for Technology and Development, the projected cost of about $50 to travel between Mumbai and Ahmedabad will be affordable only to the rich — who already have the option of flying between the cities for a comparable price. The money could be better spent, he argued, upgrading India’s creaking rail infrastructure.
“This is a vanity project to show how India is marching into the future and all that stuff — it’s purely about prestige,” Mr Raghunandan said.
Defenders of the project said its cost was reduced by cheap funding from Japan, which provided a $15bn loan to be repaid over 50 years with an annual interest of 0.1 per cent.
Farmers and villagers, who might have to relocate from the areas along the proposed route of the Mumbai Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor project, shout slogans during a protest in Mumbai in May 2018 © AFP
High-speed rail is a much loved symbol of modernity in Japan and, after losing out to China for a similar project in Indonesia, the deal with India in 2015 is a prized victory for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Japanese officials expected land acquisition to be the main obstacle but hoped that Mr Modi's sponsorship of the project would smooth its path.
“We need iconic demonstration projects,” said Vinayak Chatterjee of Feedback Infra, a consultancy, saying that New Delhi’s metro system prompted a race among other cities to emulate it. “We are living with a 19th-century railway system, with poor service and slow speeds. This will transform Indian Railways into a 21st-century service provider.”
The farmers in Valsad are unconvinced by such arguments, and their resistance may push up the cost and completion time of one of the government’s most keenly watched initiatives, Mr Chatterjee said.
“In project after project, land acquisition problems slow down development,” he said. “That’s the trade-off we’ve decided to live with, because we believe in our democracy.”
Additional reporting by Robin Harding in Tokyo
