Zabardast nayi duniya

If South Asia were more prosperous and less divided politically, our skies would be congested with aircraft flying hither and yon keeping pace with our population. Sure, the railways left behind by the British (because they could not very well uproot the tracks and cart them back) serve the purpose of transport in the Subcontinent. But people take the train mainly because they have no planes. Show me one man, woman or child from Sasaram, Bihar, who would not prefer a direct flight to Vellore for a cataract operation rather than a three day schlep on second class three tier, that too sometimes on wooden berths.

And then there is the matter of borders, those frontiers that we are making more sharply defined by the day on the ground so that it is impossible to easily fly back and forth above. There is barbed wire on the ground and warped wires in the brain. Which is why we remain the most backward region in the world after Saharan Africa, where, too, people take surface transport because societies cannot afford the air.