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Highlights:
- "India has underinvested in infrastructure for 60 years, and we're behind what we need by 10 to 12 years," says T.V. Mohandas Pai, director of human resources for Infosys.
- Highways, modern bridges, world-class airports, reliable power, and clean water are in desperately short supply. And what's already there is literally crumbling under the weight of progress.
- Across the state of Maharashtra, major cities lose power one day a week to relieve pressure on the grid. In Pune, a city of 4.5 million, it's lights out every Thursday—forcing factories to maintain expensive backup generators.
- India's exports total less than 1% of global trade, compared with 7% for China
- Up to 40% of farm produce is lost because it rots in the fields or spoils en route to consumers
- India today is about where China was a decade ago
- In elections last year in the state of Tamil Nadu, for instance, a new government was voted in after it pledged to give free color TVs to poor families
- Indian truckers pay about $5 billion a year in bribes, according to the watchdog group Transparency International
- The country's public debt stands at 82% of GDP, the 11th-worst ranking in the world
- Nokia Corp. (NOK ) saw thousands of its cellular phones ruined last October when a shipment from its factory in Chennai was soaked by rain because there was no room to warehouse the crates of handsets at the local airport
- Suzuki says trucking its cars 900 miles from its factory in Gurgaon to the port in Mumbai can take up to 10 days. That's partly due to delays at the three state borders along the way, where drivers are stalled as officials check their papers. But it's also because big rigs are barred from India's congested cities during the day, when they might bring dense traffic to a standstill. Once at the port, the Japanese company's autos can wait weeks for the next outbound ship because there's not enough dock space for cargo carriers to load and unload
- Even relatively light rains can choke sewers, flood streets, and paralyze a city, while downpours are devastating...
- When GE dispatched three employees to survey a potential site the railway favored in the northern state of Bihar, the trio returned discouraged. It took five hours to drive the 50 miles from the airport to the site, and when they got there they found...nothing. "No roads, no power, no schools, no water, no hospitals, no housing," says Pratyush Kumar, president of GE Infrastructure in India.
- Agriculture is stagnant in part because of a lack of the most rudimentary of roads to get to and from fields
- Unless the nation shakes off its legacy of bureaucracy, politics, and corruption, its ability to build adequate infrastructure will remain in doubt. So will its economic destiny.
