Bangalored In Beijing, Nandan Nilekani

Bangalored In Beijing

       -NandanNilekani

After watching 8-lane highways and digital maps of a 3000- year old city, after bumping in to an architect who says he will build seven Chinese cities in four years, Infosys CEO NandanNilekani drives home to Bangalore past ghostly girders of incomplete flyovers.

It is difficult not to be awed when one lands in Beijing. One drives into the city on board tree-lined roads with magnificent buildings on either side. Most of the roads have bicycle lanes, which are still well used. In spite of the huge crowd, there is no sense of disorderliness. There is a great sense of history, of a 3000-years-old city proud of its past and preparing for its assignment with the future.

A free afternoon gives an opportunity to visit the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall. It’s a showcase of the past, current and future of Beijing. It has enough to make an urban planner drool. Every bit of the city has been digitally mapped in detail.

The highlight is a 302 square-metre master plan of the city, at a scale of 1:750. It is surrounded by 10,000 square metres area of elevation photos of the city. I go round the exhibit marking landmarks on my map. Later when I travel around Beijing, I check whether the model is correct. Every building and park I had noted is exactly where it says it should be. What you see is what you get.

There are signs everywhere that Beijing is preparing for the 2008 Olympics. A new wing of airport is expected to be ready before that. The budget talked about the city’s up-gradation is over US $20 billion.

The 3d movie at the Exhibition Hall gives a comprehensive view of the various sporting venues, evocatively called Bird’s Nest or Cubic Water. The world’s top architect have been drafted. It is as if the entire 14 million population of Beijing is working in unison, to ready itself for a debut on the global stage.

As I sit in the magnificent Great Hall of the people, and listen to President Hu, stray phrases stick to me. “By2020, we will quadruple China’s GDP in 2000 to approximately US $4 trillion with a per capital level of some US $3000”… We must focus on economic development as our central task”… By the end of 2004, China had attracted a total of US $562.1 billion in FDI”…”Approved the establishment in China of more than 500,000 foreign-funded enterprises”… “Over 400 firms out of the FORTUNE 500 have invested in China”… “China will keep opening up its market, find new ways of using foreign capital”… “Work still harder to help foreign investors”… I read the printed version. There is no trace of ideological cant or outdated shibboleths, just a ruthless determination to leverage the world’s money and market to lift millions out of poverty.

Over dinner, I bump into Bill McDonough, an architect from Virginia. I presume he is here to design skyscrapers.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. He says he is here to build cities – seven of them – each capable of a population of 2 million. All based on a sustainable environmental model. How long will it take? Four years. I gulp. It is time to head back.

On the way to the airport, I look at the signs as they go by… the 3^rd ring road… then the 4^th ring road… Then the 5^th ring road. I have no doubt that a 6^th one is probably I the works. The last billboard I see says “Come to Dalian, the IT outsourcing capital of China.” It sounds like a premonition.

In the airport lounge, I log on to the net to see what is happening back home. Highway project referred to Supreme Court… BDA stayed from developing layout… Bangalore traffic stopped for hours due to flooding … IT companies’ land should be taken away for the poor, says ex-minister… I check my email. There is an invitation to speak at another conference on urban infrastructure. I press delete.

By the time I land in Bangalore, it is the wee hours of the morning. One of the benefits of a quaint provincial airport with sleepy officials is that you clear it in 15 minutes. As I head home, I pass the lonely girders of a half-built flyover, overdue by years. The landscape has the eerie air of an abandoned ghost town. 

So I close my eyes and console myself that we have built a mature, functioning democracy. Surely, building an eight – lane avenue with bicycle lane shouldn’t be more difficult?