The squalour of India always shocks me for the first few days after returning from some foreign land but this time, because Bangalore was the first Indian city I visited, the shock sent me reeling. Who cares if the government in Karnataka stays or goes if our most ‘buzzing’ city looks like something between a neglected construction site and a fetid slum?

I flew in almost direct from New York, where India’s finest officials and corporate rajas have been trying to convince American investors that ‘Incredible India’ is sexy at sixty. As someone who takes pride in India being a country as old as time, I thought the idea of celebrating the sixtieth birthday of a country that is a few thousand years old silly and meaningless.

But by the time I arrived at Infosys after an hour’s drive at bullock cart pace down the Hosur Road I realised it was worse. Campaigns to sell India abroad are deluded and dishonest and must stop because we are in danger of deluding ourselves into believing that because the economy is growing at more than nine per cent, we have arrived.

If it takes ten years to build one of the most important roads in the country, then we most certainly have not. If the city we think of as the symbol of post-socialist India looks the way Bangalore does, we have not.

When I first drove down the Hosur Road four years ago, it already looked bad. It was crowded, chaotic, dirty and inadequate. I remember talking about this with Bangalore’s more enlightened citizens and they said it was a matter of time before a new road was ready. Well, the new road is being built but it looks as if it is being built brick by brick, by hand.

... contd.