[sustran] NYTimes.com Article: Clean, Modern Subway, Efficiently Built. In India?

[Craig Townsend]

Clean, Modern Subway, Efficiently Built. In India? 

January 29, 2003 
By DAVID ROHDE 



NEW DELHI, Jan. 23 - The trains arrive with a whisper, 
speak with a computerized voice and at times are driven by 
women. Passengers board quickly and quietly at stations 
that are clean and airy, with graceful 30-foot arched 
ceilings and computerized entryways. 

In a city of 14 million people that otherwise tends toward 
controlled anarchy, it is a pride-inspiring marvel. 

New Delhi's new $2 billion subway system, barely more than 
a month old, is altering Indians' view of themselves and 
their capital. 

For Shashi Brabha and Sohan Sing, two beaming college 
students taking a ride purely for the pleasure of it, it 
represents all that India can be. "It was good," a grinning 
Ms. Brabha said after her first ride. "It was modern." 

The Metro is not the first subway built in India - 
Calcutta's decade-old system holds that honor - and the 
full 62 mile, 90-station system will not be completed until 
2010. 

But already New Delhi's system is being hailed as a 
political, managerial and engineering triumph. The first 
five miles of the system opened on Dec. 24, on budget and 
on time - a rarity in Indian public works projects. 

Not least, over the last four and a half years, much of the 
sprawling system has been built in, above and beneath some 
of the most densely populated square miles on earth. 

The success of the project, built with Japanese aid money, 
has become a striking symbol of change in India. Hundreds 
of thousands of people take what they call joy rides, short 
trips to savor the efficiency, modernity and sense of 
progress the new system seems to generate. 

Tourists add it to their itinerary. Residents of outlying 
communities drive in for a ride. Parents bring their 
children. 

"You don't feel the speed," said Sugandha Salhan, a 
10-year-old girl who marveled at the smooth ride. 

Much of the credit for the project's success goes to a 
70-year-old longtime public servant who oversaw it, 
Elattuvalapil Sreedharan, an engineer who has been hailed 
for maintaining zero tolerance for corruption and coming up 
with innovative solutions to problems. 

His success has indirectly bolstered the stand of Indians 
who advocate the privatization of government-run industries 
criticized for waste, poor service and fraud. 

Instead of creating a ponderous bureaucracy, he 
subcontracted most of the construction work, hiring top 
Indian and foreign engineering firms. Of the 20,000 workers 
involved in the project, only 400 are government employees. 
Older Delhi-ites marvel that Metro workers do an 
extraordinary thing for notoriously bureaucratic Indian 
civil servants: they quickly respond to complaints. 

In a feat of engineering, construction workers are building 
almost seven miles of underground tunnels and nearly 32 
miles of above-ground track without closing major roads. 
Down the center of busy avenues, precast 50-ton blocks of 
reinforced concrete are being fashioned into an overheard 
track. Cranes lift sections at night when there is little 
traffic. During the day, tens of thousands of cars speed 
underneath as workers secure the track. 

In four and a half years of construction, eight people have 
died in accidents. The number is considered a measure of 
success. One of those killed was an unlucky thief who tried 
to steal braces holding up a concrete slab; it fell and 
killed him. 

Much of the subway is being constructed in one of the most 
densely populated places on earth, Old Delhi, a packed 
warren of decrepit buildings and choked streets that 
resembles a human petri dish. Lower Manhattan, by 
comparison, seems like an open field. 

Near Hauz Quazi Circle, where five roads meet and hundreds 
of small stores sell every imaginable type of building 
supply, one large building has been knocked down for the 
construction of a subway station underground. Surrounding 
the site on all sides, shops and apartment still teem with 
life. 

Ninety feet below ground, a German-built boring machine is 
carving out two-and-a-half-mile dual tunnels for the 
trains. In other areas of the city, contractors closed down 
one lane of a road, dug a trench up to 90 feet deep and 
then covered it so the road could quickly reopen. 

Owners of 38 shops demolished to make way for the station 
complained that they were not being fairly compensated, but 
more than a dozen businessman interviewed around the 
construction all praised the project. 

Shopkeepers pointed out steel girders erected to steady the 
walls of nearby buildings and monitors that measure 
vibrations. They said dump trunks haul dirt only at night 
and crews wash down the streets before morning. 

"How can you build something in an area like this?" 
marveled Bharat Bhushan, whose hardware store sits on a 
narrow lane in Old Delhi choked by wave after wave of 
humanity. "It is exemplary." 

Manoj Kumar, 21, a cigarette vendor whose kiosk is a few 
feet from an overhead track, uttered not a word of 
complaint about the dust, danger and inconvenience of the 
sprawling project. Supporting it, he suggested, is a civic 
duty. "This is good work," he said. "This is development. 
This will be the pride of Delhi." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/international/asia/29DELH.html?
ex=1044903048&ei=1&en=7d623322d2840335