Can Narendra Modi complete India’s state-building project?
Ethnic violence shows it will take more than infrastructure development
SUMIT DAS, a 32-year-old shopkeeper in Kulajan, a town in Assam in India’s north-east, divides his life into two parts: before the bridge and after. Until 2018 Kulajan, on the north bank of the Brahmaputra river, was poor and isolated. Crossing the river to reach the nearby commercial hub of Dibrugarh could take a day. Then Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, inaugurated the Bogibeel bridge, the country’s longest rail-and-road crossing, cutting the journey time to less than an hour. Kulajan has been transformed. Mr Das used to be employed in a clothes shop and now runs his own. “I owe this to the bridge,” he says.
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This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “New bridges and old fissures”
From the November 11th 2023 edition
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