Why are Indians shunning the country’s shiny new metro lines?
Costly fares, inconvenience and poor planning all play a role
WHEN NARENDRA MODI became India’s prime minister in 2014, the country’s entire metro-rail network spanned 229km (142 miles) in four-and-a-half cities: Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon (a satellite of Delhi), Kolkata and Mumbai. That amounted to less than half the length of Shanghai’s metro at the time. Yet Mr Modi’s government has since presided over a massive metro-rail expansion. By last April India’s network covered 870km in 18 cities.
Explore more
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Off track”
From the December 23rd 2023 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
The Adani scandal takes the shine off Modi’s electoral success
The tycoon’s indictment clouds the prime minister’s prospects
Priyanka Gandhi: dynastic scion, and hope of India’s opposition
Poised to enter parliament, she may have bigger ambitions than that
The Caspian Sea is shrinking rapidly
This has big implications for Russia, which has come to rely on Central Asian ports
Racial tensions boil over in New Zealand
A controversial bill regarding Maori people punctures its relative harmony
Once a free-market pioneer, Sri Lanka takes a leap to the left
A new president with Marxist roots now dominates parliament too
The mystery of India’s female labour-force participation rate
A good news story? Maybe