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India has previously tried to woo semiconductor players but firms were deterred by India's wobbly infrastructure, unstable power supply, bureaucracy and poor pl

India has previously tried to woo semiconductor players but firms were deterred by India's wobbly infrastructure, unstable power supply, bureaucracy and poor planning. India must have one world class city, right? If they want to compete with China, they need to kind of do something China is willing to do. Tear down an existing city and just rebuild it perfectly with infrastructure and city planning.

perryizgr8 6y ago
> Tear down an existing city This is practically impossible in a democracy like India. Tearing down a city and rebuilding it will take longer than the term of any elected representative/official. The displaced people will vote him out before the plan comes to fruition. The only way forward for us is to do things gradually. Every step must preserve citizens' liberty and rights, and remove government regulations so the people can create wealth.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  If we had to play this thought experiment out, what cities could be rebuilt incrementally (half of it first)? Obviously the major ones would not be a good candidate. There must be one. If infrastructure is the problem then you must at some point face the music and pay the infrastructure debt. Otherwise you are basically not serious about moving forward. If one city gets rebuilt and becomes an economic magnet, then that should provide enough political/social capital to roll out more new cities.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    Let's do LA first, it's atrociously inefficient
    - imtringued 6y ago
      The ones in power like it that way. With India at least you have the pretense that it is a developing country.
  - perryizgr8 6y ago
    > There must be one. I think tier 2 cities like Pune and Bangalore are good candidates. They are both expanding like crazy. It will be easy (not really, but easier) to build out the new developments with next-gen infrastructure. Once the new areas are built up and show their superiority over a few years, the older ones will be upgraded due to public pressure.
    - kamaal 6y ago
      As some one born and raised in Bangalore, These kind of projections have been done for long. They don't happen, and there's lots of reasons for that. For starters I honestly believe to have genuine upgrade of infrastructure and living standards, you need to increase people's income levels. While there's steady upwards income mobility in Bangalore, it's still no where near to cause leap frog progress. The remainder of reasons go beyond the scope of discussion of a small HN comment. They have lots to do with insane levels of corruption, and socio-economic attitudes of people. Enough money already exists, is sanctioned and spent to leap frog infrastructure to DisneyLand levels. But nearly negligible actually gets spent, needless to say the dishonesty in quality of work done. Beyond this we just need to acknowledge nearly everyone here(including the common man walking on the street) is corrupt and just wants to loot and scoot at the expense of destroying things for everyone. The other part just continues. Bangalore is not even a city, its really more like a mix of at-least 4 districts, gradually absorbed in to the original 'Bangalore' city. People will keep coming into the city, and jobs keep arriving. Since the already dismal state of spending, and progress. No new cities can be built in other places, so people continue to arrive. Real estate prices go up, there is no where near Sanitation infrastructure, or Electricity or even roads. But investors keep buying out lands a decade in advance. And people with no discipline or inclination to play this game just have to pay up high rents or pay 2 - 5 times the cost of a home. All this for access to schools, hospitals, career etc.
      - perryizgr8 6y ago
        > nearly everyone here(including the common man walking on the street) is corrupt and just wants to loot and scoot at the expense of destroying things for everyone I agree with most of your comment, but I refuse to believe this is true. Almost everyone I have personally met in the city (from the auto drivers to shopkeepers to policemen to businessmen) was well-meaning and well-behaved, with an intelligent, nuanced outlook and understanding of common problems we all face. The problems in our society are systemic, not because "people are bad". People are (in general) good and law abiding. For example, a common conundrum I've heard about is that in any restaurant that serves alcohol, the customs/excise dept requires there to be only one exit/entry. However, fire safety code calls for multiple exits. So what is the restaurant owner to do?? He has to bribe the safety inspector, or the customs inspector, or more commonly both. The owner is not a bad, corrupt person. The inspectors are not bad, corrupt persons. The people who drafted the various codes did not draft them with an aim to encourage corruption. But combined together, all this causes the problems we see.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
cocoland2 6y ago
India is not an Autocracy where a few million can be automagically teleported to another city where the PB has decided to build a factory. Do not think this is something that will happen in a few thousand years in India , for starters many consider a place of residence to be sacred and passed on from generations (slowly changing) and would never allow something like this to happen
- vmception 6y ago
  My only rebuttal to this, and I don't know much about it and am only an outside observer from America, is that India has amended its constitution 104 times since 1951. So from my perspective, anything can happen. Obviously if certain topics just don't have consensus due to the culture, then it won't, but that's my observation.
  - indianpers 6y ago
    I seriously doubt that .. Land and house are "sacred" in India .. It is next to Gods in a way .. People worship their houses , to bring such a change is near to impossible
  - cocoland2 6y ago
    Sure thing , can happen (from federal or state). We had a communist reform in my state where implementation of the land act transferred land rights to the tillers in the 50's. So it is possible with an act of parliament or state law. Is that going to be simple to enact such a thing , absolutely doubt it.
  - occamschainsaw 6y ago
    Slightly off the topic, but from my limited knowledge, I think that amending the constitution is not as big a deal in parliamentary democracies as it is in the US. The UK doesn’t even have a codified constitution[1]. These living constitutions are much more flexible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
  - blueblisters 6y ago
paxys 6y ago
Why do you need to tear down a city to build another one? There are already numerous special economic zones across the country (especially at/near ports) that have seen great success when it comes to more traditional manufacturing. The problem with semiconductors is they need very specialized equipment, talent, materials and overall infrastructure that is just not available in India. So "unstable power supply" is a very simplified (and incorrect) argument.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Because I doubt the semiconductor industry is the only industry complaining about this. Tourism? How about the actual citizens? Shipping and transportation? Talent in software that just want nothing more than to leave the country when they get a chance? Rebuilding is important because the major population centers have already been defined. Otherwise you’d need an exodus every time a new city is built.
  - paxys 6y ago
    What does any of that have to do with semiconductor manufacturing? You can have the best tourism, quality of life and everything else, and still not be able to build stuff domestically. Look at the USA, for example.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      The USA is the victim of having a reserve currency though. It's simply not economically viable to export products from a nation when every other nation wants to dump their products into that nation.
markdown 6y ago
> Tear down an existing city and just rebuild it perfectly with infrastructure and city planning. Can you imagine tearing down Detroit and rebuilding it from scratch? What about Seattle? Impossible, isn't it? India is even more democratic than USA, so it's never going to happen.
- erklik 6y ago
  > India is even more democratic than USA, so it's never going to happen. Not according to these folks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index USA is 25, India is 53.
  - markdown 6y ago
    Look at their methodology. They don't take into account the role of money in politics. Bribery of govt officials and politicians is legal in the US (they call it lobbying) so only the rich get to control politicians and their policies. Further, massive media conglomerates controlled by billionaires have an outsized influence on govt policy. As such, while the US has the veneer of being democratic, it really isn't. And I haven't even gotten into gerrymandering, which makes a complete mockery of democracy.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      What makes you think bribes don't exist in India? They have lobbying too, and illegal bribes are also all too common.[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
rossng 6y ago
History has shown us that mass rebuilding of cities is a terrible idea. Strong cities develop organically. Slow evolution of the built environment has a kind of 'antifragile' nature. It prevents you from accidentally doing too much of the wrong thing at the same time, and ensures you are building things that people actually want. Just look at some of the awful mistakes made by planners in the 20th century. * Entire neighbourhoods were bulldozed in many American cities to make way for huge road infrastructure projects. These projects mainly displaced socioeconomically disadvantaged people and ethnic minorities, with enormous and long-lasting impacts. Decades later, it is broadly acknowledged that massive road infrastructure is toxic to cities. It causes pollution, is enormously expensive to maintain and destroys the character of a city. * Many countries built lots of huge Le Corbusier-inspired residential towers. Since then, we have learned that the 'towers in a park' ideal is incredibly destructive to communities and the urban fabric of cities. But the allure of big towers in 3D renders is hard to overcome - China went ahead and built enormous numbers of them in the last 30 years, even though urban planners worldwide already knew how bad they were. * We covered the countryside in endless sprawl. Houses were built around the idea that everyone must own a car and drive everywhere. Communities are too sparse to support natural urban life - shops, cafes, community spaces and so on. Real, ecologically diverse nature was razed in favour of an endless grassy monoculture. I believe we should have some humility and stop trying to revolutionise the world's cities, thinking that we know best. Instead, we should stick to improvements that we know definitely work. Transit-oriented development. Dense, walkable neighbourhoods. Quality green space for all. Elimination of private cars from city centres. Reliable electricity and clean water. District heating. Sustainable urban drainage. Strong environmental protection for bodies of water. And so on.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > * Many countries built lots of huge Le Corbusier-inspired residential towers. Since then, we have learned that the 'towers in a park' ideal is incredibly destructive to communities and the urban fabric of cities. But the allure of big towers in 3D renders is hard to overcome - China went ahead and built enormous numbers of them in the last 30 years, even though urban planners worldwide already knew how bad they were. I'd say it worked well, and is not anything "unsustainable." Tell how exactly it is "wrong"
triceratops 6y ago
> Tear down an existing city and just rebuild it perfectly with infrastructure and city planning. Lol what? We warn against big-bang software rewrites because shit always goes wrong. But you're confident rebuilding a city perfectly is no big deal?

perryizgr8 6y ago

> Tear down an existing city This is practically impossible in a democracy like India. Tearing down a city and rebuilding it will take longer than the term of any elected representative/official. The displaced people will vote him out before the plan comes to fruition. The only way forward for us is to do things gradually. Every step must preserve citizens' liberty and rights, and remove government regulations so the people can create wealth.

runawaybottle 6y ago
If we had to play this thought experiment out, what cities could be rebuilt incrementally (half of it first)? Obviously the major ones would not be a good candidate. There must be one. If infrastructure is the problem then you must at some point face the music and pay the infrastructure debt. Otherwise you are basically not serious about moving forward. If one city gets rebuilt and becomes an economic magnet, then that should provide enough political/social capital to roll out more new cities.
- klyrs 6y ago
  Let's do LA first, it's atrociously inefficient
  - imtringued 6y ago
    The ones in power like it that way. With India at least you have the pretense that it is a developing country.
- perryizgr8 6y ago
  > There must be one. I think tier 2 cities like Pune and Bangalore are good candidates. They are both expanding like crazy. It will be easy (not really, but easier) to build out the new developments with next-gen infrastructure. Once the new areas are built up and show their superiority over a few years, the older ones will be upgraded due to public pressure.
  - kamaal 6y ago
    As some one born and raised in Bangalore, These kind of projections have been done for long. They don't happen, and there's lots of reasons for that. For starters I honestly believe to have genuine upgrade of infrastructure and living standards, you need to increase people's income levels. While there's steady upwards income mobility in Bangalore, it's still no where near to cause leap frog progress. The remainder of reasons go beyond the scope of discussion of a small HN comment. They have lots to do with insane levels of corruption, and socio-economic attitudes of people. Enough money already exists, is sanctioned and spent to leap frog infrastructure to DisneyLand levels. But nearly negligible actually gets spent, needless to say the dishonesty in quality of work done. Beyond this we just need to acknowledge nearly everyone here(including the common man walking on the street) is corrupt and just wants to loot and scoot at the expense of destroying things for everyone. The other part just continues. Bangalore is not even a city, its really more like a mix of at-least 4 districts, gradually absorbed in to the original 'Bangalore' city. People will keep coming into the city, and jobs keep arriving. Since the already dismal state of spending, and progress. No new cities can be built in other places, so people continue to arrive. Real estate prices go up, there is no where near Sanitation infrastructure, or Electricity or even roads. But investors keep buying out lands a decade in advance. And people with no discipline or inclination to play this game just have to pay up high rents or pay 2 - 5 times the cost of a home. All this for access to schools, hospitals, career etc.
    - perryizgr8 6y ago
      > nearly everyone here(including the common man walking on the street) is corrupt and just wants to loot and scoot at the expense of destroying things for everyone I agree with most of your comment, but I refuse to believe this is true. Almost everyone I have personally met in the city (from the auto drivers to shopkeepers to policemen to businessmen) was well-meaning and well-behaved, with an intelligent, nuanced outlook and understanding of common problems we all face. The problems in our society are systemic, not because "people are bad". People are (in general) good and law abiding. For example, a common conundrum I've heard about is that in any restaurant that serves alcohol, the customs/excise dept requires there to be only one exit/entry. However, fire safety code calls for multiple exits. So what is the restaurant owner to do?? He has to bribe the safety inspector, or the customs inspector, or more commonly both. The owner is not a bad, corrupt person. The inspectors are not bad, corrupt persons. The people who drafted the various codes did not draft them with an aim to encourage corruption. But combined together, all this causes the problems we see.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

cocoland2 6y ago

India is not an Autocracy where a few million can be automagically teleported to another city where the PB has decided to build a factory. Do not think this is something that will happen in a few thousand years in India , for starters many consider a place of residence to be sacred and passed on from generations (slowly changing) and would never allow something like this to happen

vmception 6y ago
My only rebuttal to this, and I don't know much about it and am only an outside observer from America, is that India has amended its constitution 104 times since 1951. So from my perspective, anything can happen. Obviously if certain topics just don't have consensus due to the culture, then it won't, but that's my observation.
- indianpers 6y ago
  I seriously doubt that .. Land and house are "sacred" in India .. It is next to Gods in a way .. People worship their houses , to bring such a change is near to impossible
- cocoland2 6y ago
  Sure thing , can happen (from federal or state). We had a communist reform in my state where implementation of the land act transferred land rights to the tillers in the 50's. So it is possible with an act of parliament or state law. Is that going to be simple to enact such a thing , absolutely doubt it.
- occamschainsaw 6y ago
  Slightly off the topic, but from my limited knowledge, I think that amending the constitution is not as big a deal in parliamentary democracies as it is in the US. The UK doesn’t even have a codified constitution[1]. These living constitutions are much more flexible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
- blueblisters 6y ago

paxys 6y ago

Why do you need to tear down a city to build another one? There are already numerous special economic zones across the country (especially at/near ports) that have seen great success when it comes to more traditional manufacturing. The problem with semiconductors is they need very specialized equipment, talent, materials and overall infrastructure that is just not available in India. So "unstable power supply" is a very simplified (and incorrect) argument.

runawaybottle 6y ago
Because I doubt the semiconductor industry is the only industry complaining about this. Tourism? How about the actual citizens? Shipping and transportation? Talent in software that just want nothing more than to leave the country when they get a chance? Rebuilding is important because the major population centers have already been defined. Otherwise you’d need an exodus every time a new city is built.
- paxys 6y ago
  What does any of that have to do with semiconductor manufacturing? You can have the best tourism, quality of life and everything else, and still not be able to build stuff domestically. Look at the USA, for example.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    The USA is the victim of having a reserve currency though. It's simply not economically viable to export products from a nation when every other nation wants to dump their products into that nation.

markdown 6y ago

> Tear down an existing city and just rebuild it perfectly with infrastructure and city planning. Can you imagine tearing down Detroit and rebuilding it from scratch? What about Seattle? Impossible, isn't it? India is even more democratic than USA, so it's never going to happen.

erklik 6y ago
> India is even more democratic than USA, so it's never going to happen. Not according to these folks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index USA is 25, India is 53.
- markdown 6y ago
  Look at their methodology. They don't take into account the role of money in politics. Bribery of govt officials and politicians is legal in the US (they call it lobbying) so only the rich get to control politicians and their policies. Further, massive media conglomerates controlled by billionaires have an outsized influence on govt policy. As such, while the US has the veneer of being democratic, it really isn't. And I haven't even gotten into gerrymandering, which makes a complete mockery of democracy.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    What makes you think bribes don't exist in India? They have lobbying too, and illegal bribes are also all too common.[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

rossng 6y ago

History has shown us that mass rebuilding of cities is a terrible idea. Strong cities develop organically. Slow evolution of the built environment has a kind of 'antifragile' nature. It prevents you from accidentally doing too much of the wrong thing at the same time, and ensures you are building things that people actually want. Just look at some of the awful mistakes made by planners in the 20th century. * Entire neighbourhoods were bulldozed in many American cities to make way for huge road infrastructure projects. These projects mainly displaced socioeconomically disadvantaged people and ethnic minorities, with enormous and long-lasting impacts. Decades later, it is broadly acknowledged that massive road infrastructure is toxic to cities. It causes pollution, is enormously expensive to maintain and destroys the character of a city. * Many countries built lots of huge Le Corbusier-inspired residential towers. Since then, we have learned that the 'towers in a park' ideal is incredibly destructive to communities and the urban fabric of cities. But the allure of big towers in 3D renders is hard to overcome - China went ahead and built enormous numbers of them in the last 30 years, even though urban planners worldwide already knew how bad they were. * We covered the countryside in endless sprawl. Houses were built around the idea that everyone must own a car and drive everywhere. Communities are too sparse to support natural urban life - shops, cafes, community spaces and so on. Real, ecologically diverse nature was razed in favour of an endless grassy monoculture. I believe we should have some humility and stop trying to revolutionise the world's cities, thinking that we know best. Instead, we should stick to improvements that we know definitely work. Transit-oriented development. Dense, walkable neighbourhoods. Quality green space for all. Elimination of private cars from city centres. Reliable electricity and clean water. District heating. Sustainable urban drainage. Strong environmental protection for bodies of water. And so on.

baybal2 6y ago
> * Many countries built lots of huge Le Corbusier-inspired residential towers. Since then, we have learned that the 'towers in a park' ideal is incredibly destructive to communities and the urban fabric of cities. But the allure of big towers in 3D renders is hard to overcome - China went ahead and built enormous numbers of them in the last 30 years, even though urban planners worldwide already knew how bad they were. I'd say it worked well, and is not anything "unsustainable." Tell how exactly it is "wrong"

triceratops 6y ago

> Tear down an existing city and just rebuild it perfectly with infrastructure and city planning. Lol what? We warn against big-bang software rewrites because shit always goes wrong. But you're confident rebuilding a city perfectly is no big deal?