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Much has been written in the last few years about the rise of China and India. While China has become the world’s factory, India – with its large population of English speakers – is becoming the world’s service centre.

If you travel through the outer suburbs of Bangalore and Chennai you will see rows and rows of shiny new office blocks that could be at any business park in the U.S. Outside these buildings though and it is India as usual – half dug up roads and traffic chaos everywhere.

With all the talk of India’s emerging economy, I was half expecting more work being done on infrastructure. On this whole trip I have found myself looking at every thing from a civil engineers perspective. Some people come to India to find themselves. I was already “found” before I left, but I think if I had of came here before I got into web development, I would have realised my calling in life is for town planning.

India’s great attribute of being the world’s largest democracy is also a great obstacle for massive infrastructure overhaul. China doesn’t have this problem. If the Chinese government want to build a new freeway that will wipe out a small village in the process, they will build it. In India the villagers will protest, the project stops, then the whole thing becomes an election issue, then nothing gets done.

Former Indian PM V.P. Singh once said that his main priority as prime minister was to manage contradictions. Trying to appeal one billion people is no easy task.

While I was thinking of these things I happened upon a copy of BusinessWeek which had a very interesting article on this topic, The Trouble With India.