For the second time, I guess, I am going to criticize something for being small. I remember saying that iPod Shuffle is too small for comfort. Very easy to lose, it can drom off you pocket while you are taking out your handkerchief and you wouldnt even know. Anyways, but you can live with that owing to the advantages to such a small MP3 player. But here I am going to talk about something different.

I drive to Gurgaon everyday for work. I leave at about 10 mins to 9 and reach my office at about 10-10:15. That is about 20 kms of travel is more than an hour. Now one would say… good enough. That is a nice average speed (20kms/hr) is a city like Delhi. But unfortunately, this speed is far from acceptable. Why? Because the most of the distance of this 20 kms are travelled on an expressway. Yes, the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway. It has opened about 6 months ago, about 4 lanes each side. Boasts of the largest toll booth in India. And, in reality, during peak office hours, you have to travel bumper to bumper, most of it, if not all. I still remember, when they were making this expressway, they projected a maximum stoppage time of about 20-30 seconds, and in reality, during peak hours, you need to stop for about 10-15 minutes. Now thats where foreseeing the future comes in. India SUCKs at that. First, they are unable to judge how much time they themselves need to complete a project, and by the time they complete it, its too late for all the initial predictions. I still remember, I guess last year there was a proposal to build a new Airport at Noida which would serve as a satellite Airport for Delhi. The inital project proposal that was presented would be completed by 2014 and the predictions are that it would run out of capacity by 2019.

“Short-sightedness” is what our country suffers from, and this bring me to the Tatas. Nano is truely a wonderful and a very ambitious project by the Tatas… But what happens when it actually comes to road by end of next year. Every day about 1000 cars are added to the roads of Delhi, and Delhi cant take any more. At the same time it would also increase the fuel demands. If a car is sold as opposed to a bike, the fuel consumption is atleast doubled. The latest fuel price hike and the associated agitations certainly highlight how important even this issue is. So have the Tatas thought about the catastrophe that this project might lead to??