INDIANS ONCE KNEW how to build great cities. Take the ruins of Hampi (pictured), a site in southern India that rivals Angkor Wat in magnificence but gets only 47,000 foreign visitors a year, compared with the 2.3m who flock to the Cambodian attraction. Built in the 15th century, Hampi was crammed with splendid temples and mosques, mighty stables for elephants, markets for diamond traders and a granite chariot. Intricate sculptures illustrating the Kama Sutra adorn the walls of many buildings. One palace even had a flush toilet. By contrast, around half of Indians today, including many city-dwellers, still defecate in the open.
Modern Indian cities are mostly ill-planned, crowded, polluted and jammed with traffic. Rural voters still outnumber urban ones by about two to one, and there are no powerful mayors. Apart from a few pampered places such as New Delhi, politicians were mostly indifferent to cities. That is changing as people like Mr Modi respond to their growing clout. He promises to build 100 smart cities by 2020, generating millions of jobs.
The first, GIFT City, is now rising on 886 acres (358 hectares) of semi-desert near...
from The Economist: Special report http://ift.tt/1PYQAMo
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