16 minutes

I'm on Kingfisher flight 162 from Jaipur to Delhi, a state capital to a national capital. We are still on the ground, and I am staring at the setback display, which right now is telling the statistics on our upcoming flight. Distance: 230km. Time to destination: 16 minutes.

The drive, I've been told, takes six or seven hours of dodging traffic, cows, and potholes. Which I suppose is why I, along with my hundred odd fellow passengers have bothered to take the time to cram ourselves through the mutilple layers of officious security of one of India's domestic airports it exchange for 16 minutes of flying time.

It's india's infrastructure problem underscored. The flight cost $70, for what in the US would have been a two hour drive consuming $10 of gas (well maybe $20). In india, most people either suffer through the drive or an equally slow and unreliable train ride, or most often, just don't go.

It blows the mind to think what might happen if India ever built modern expressways and managed to keep the cows and rickshaws off of them. People could move about. An economy based on cheap and efficient domestic trade might sprout up, such as what has long since happened in the US and elsewhere.

But its just idle thought. India's much vaunted Golden Quadrilateral road system, which is supposed to be a giant step forward, is in reality just an expantion of existing roads. Instead of a two laned cow infested, potholled morass, they have four lane cow infested, potholled morasses. And this is vaunted as a massive step forward. India is decades away from a road network such as even brazil or south africa have, let along what can be found in China (where the roads put ours to shame). I think its more likely that india will find a way to put cows on the information superhighway than to get the cows off of their actual highways.