The Road To Everest

The Chinese have declared that they want to build a road to Mt Everest, or more specifically from the foot of the mountain to a base camp some 17,000 feet up to the 29,035- feet-high peak.

Not surprisingly, protests have erupted over this, from environmentalists all over and some back home concerned with defence "implications". My problem, though, is not that the Chinese have announced their intentions. My problem is that they will do it.

This road, incidentally, is part of a larger project to create the longest torch relay in Olympic history - a 137,000-km, 130-day route crossing five continents to reach the Everest summit ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August 2008.

My bigger problem is that our track record in execution diminishes with every passing day. From steel plants in Orissa to airports, bridges and metro railways in Maharashtra and special economic zones all over the country to initiatives to link rivers - the debit side of the infrastructure ledger continues to swell.

I am tempted to contrast the Chinese announcement with a similar, hypothetical one to build a 67-km road on our side of the border, to a hypothetical mountain peak. What would happen? First, widespread protests would follow. The matter would be debated extensively across media, environmentalists would start filing cases of PIL. Opposition parties would call it a sell-out.

A year or two would pass. Technical, techno-economic and pre-feasibility reports would be initiated so as to legitimise the project. The nation at large would wait with bated breath for the reports. On their release, there would be further hue and cry. Opposition parties (even if they initiated the project in power) would protest soundly. The Left would threaten or go on a strike.

But the government, let's assume, would push on. Another year or two would pass but critical elements like financial closure with a private partner would be seen through.

At which point, several cases would be filed in the High Courts, alleging all forms of impropriety in the contract process. A technical committee headed by a retired judge would then work with the court to establish the genuineness of the process and grade the bidders. After much deliberation a report would be prepared.

Along the way, stories would surface about a Cabinet Committee, Empowered Committee and the Prime Minister's Office taking either this or that view on the subject. By which time the surviving players would be sharpening their knives for a Supreme Court face-off. Which in turn would also be dealing with environmental petitions, which had made their way from the lower courts. The Supreme Court would arrive at what seemed like the absolutely final decision on the matter and ask for speedy execution.

Back on the road, construction would be all set to begin. But the day the contractors brought in their excavators, a large crowd would descend on the site. They would claim to be original inhabitants and/or possessing documents demonstrating that while indeed they were not owners of the land in question, they had been "regularised" by the government in power a few years ago.

More importantly they would claim the compensation formula was blatantly unfair.  Particularly since several property developers and hotel chains had evinced interest in setting up shop along the road to the summit. Property prices had zoomed to a higher peak in a manner of speaking. The equation had changed with the result that compensation had to be reworked.

Maybe the sequencing would change but this would roughly be the story. Anyway, around the same time the Mt Everest road proposal surfaced, Maharashtra Finance Minister Jayant Patil announced a proposal to introduce a MagLev train network on six routes, including from the new proposed airport in Panvel to Santacruz (old airport) and Nariman Point.

Now while I would love to have a MagLev train whizzing through Mumbai city at 400 kmph, I think I have a reasonable idea of its chances, ever. Particularly since we are still struggling to get encroachments cleared to expand an existing airport and are only daydreaming about a Mumbai second airport. Or for that matter a metro railway network in the city for which the only evidence is a foundation stone.

Mind you, even the MagLev train (the world's only commercial service) that runs from Pudong International Airport to Shanghai has been a white elephant of sorts. An extension to Hangzhou city has been suspended for now following fears that there would be radiation fall-outs on residents along the line. And it's not that the Chinese have found the funding easy to come by. Maybe we will crack it where the Chinese failed.

To return to Everest, an opinion piece in China's People's Daily last week wondered what the brouhaha was about. Especially since all China was doing was to convert a rubble-and-rock-strewn path into a road. And the point, according to the column, was what mattered was what China did subsequently to ensure that the environment was protected rather than building the road in itself!

But the Chinese' hardboiled pragmatism seemed to have found a fitting retort. News agencies quoted Ed Viesturs, an American climber who has scaled Everest six times, saying it would not matter whether the road was paved or not. No matter how well-maintained the road is, climbers must ascend slowly to give them time to acclimatise to the steadily dropping oxygen levels, he is reported to have said. Now, that sounds like something we often hear. Why do we need a road? After all, the land is flat.