The roads here in Gurgaon have gotten steadily worse since my arrival last week. The persistent rain has seeped through the top tar and softened the mud below, leading the soil to depress and the pavement to crack. This last trip back from Delhi was the bumpiest yet--and it's just going to keep getting worse.
The roads in Gurgaon have not been built well. Instead of creating a concrete base on which the tar is then layered, the builders lay the tar directly on the earth. This would've been almost acceptable if they had first smoothed the earth and then put down gravel to create a base. Alas, that was too expensive. Instead of stripping the crumbling road, they fill in the holes with fresh tar and wait for the next week of rain to do its damage. Why?
Simply: corruption.
Government officials make lots of money off of the road racket. They put out a bid for contractors to build roads. The best bidders--and by that I mean those offering the biggest kickback--then subcontract the work out to the builders using the cheapest materials so as to retain the most cash. This is how they make their profits after bribing the local government. DLF, the company that owns most of Gurgaon, has pleaded with the government to be able to build their own roads properly, but the government makes too much money through this corrupt process to allow them to do this.
And what's the result? I have a stomach ache.
While it's distressing to hear about this practice in India, it makes me think about how widespread this sort of thing is. You write about it on a large scale; I've experienced this on a small one: house-renovation contractors. A long time ago, I was involved in a house renovation. Several bids were given, and the job was awarded to a contractor who seemed smart and honest. Wrong. He took the money and proceeded to find ways to do the job as cheaply as possible, meaning using inexpensive materials and laborers who worked quickly, but cut corners everywhere. In the end, the house was done for the price agreed upon, but Arnie the contractor walked away with the money, leaving us with poor insulation, badly-matched moldings, and wallpaper that did not adhere. So, one has to ask, who was bilking who? If the contract price had been negotiated higher, the house would have been renovated with more quality, perhaps. It seems that it's a two-way street. At the level of government and government contracts, can one ever know which "actor" in the deal is really corrupt?
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