Transport Links and Economic Development: A Case Study from India
Introduction:
​
Economics is concerned with the interactions between people in society and, primarily, an analysis of their behaviour as they sell or purchase goods and services. The subject also determines methods through which the most efficient level of output can be achieved. At the same time, developmental economics, the branch of the subject this essay is firmly focused on, deals with the most beneficial resource allocations for societies and subsequently the development of countries.
Mumbai is a city, like other major metropolis including New York and London, in which timeliness and safety is paramount. The nearly 8 million daily riders have adopted the railway as the most time efficient mode of transport these Mumbai ‘locals’, as they are commonly referred to, are absolute lifelines of Mumbai City.
Though Mumbai is the only city in India with such a long (500km), efficient and reliable public network, the growth of infrastructure has not kept pace with growth of the city’s suburbs and population. This leads to a demeaning and dehumanising overcrowding of the locals. With more than 3,000 deaths annually, the city has more people dying of rail accidents than in any terrorist attacks in India. Besides the safety issue, the other obvious gap is the lack of east-west connectivity. Road transport, public network of buses (BEST), rickshaws, private cars have all tried to fill in that infrastructural gap, though woefully inadequately. This humid, coastal city is ripe for a significant addition in its transport infrastructure post-independence.
On the backdrop of this, Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of India, built its first metro in 2011. This, for the very first time, provided east-west connectivity between Versova, Andheri and Ghatkopar, three major suburbs (VAG). The following map is a close up of Mumbai, highlighting the three regions:
​
​
​
​
​
Prior to the introduction of the metro line, a passenger travelling between these three stations would have to take a long and arduous connection through Dadar near Prabhadevi, in the southern part of the city. The total duration of the travel would be more than 90 minutes. The VAG metro line has directly reduced the travel time to 20 minutes while also contributing to the safety of passengers.
In spite of obvious benefits to a daily ridership of approximately 300,000 and the significant costs of Rs. 21000 crores, it was hard to find a study into the developmental benefits of the metro line. This essay is an attempt to fill that gap. As a result, the research question this essay will answer is:
To what extent has the introduction of the metro line between Versova and Ghatkopar in Mumbai impacted the economic development in the region?
My hypothesis is that the introduction of the VAG has had a economically prospering and notable developmental impact between the regions. To understand if this is the case, it is first important to understand how economic development can be measured. Single indicators focus on financial, health and education measures but unless they are combined into a composite measure, they lack the ability to capture the holistic nature of development. For a project such as the metro line, it is difficult to measure and accumulate data regarding the impact on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country. It is also difficult to measure the impact of the project on literacy rates and life expectancy hence, the Human Development Index (HDI) would also prove to be an unreasonable measurement. As a direct result of this and in order to make my research question more answerable and my conclusions more accurate, I will evaluate the extent of economic development using the measures of Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) and real freedoms provided to the population.
​
Here is a link to the full paper.
