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00:04Potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, 500 lives that have been lost because of potholes.
00:09You might actually damage your vehicle and potentially even hurt yourself too.
00:13It's horrible to stay on this.
00:14We are having the best brains in this city, but we are living with third class infrastructure condition.
00:21Whenever I've taken a joyride on the roads of Bangalore, the views have always been the same.
00:28Potholes, everywhere, all the time.
00:31These craters not only slow down traffic on already congested roads, but fill up water when it drains, making commuting
00:37in the city even more chaotic.
00:39I began researching this topic because there was a pothole on my commute on the way to work.
00:44And it has literally remained there for eight freaking months.
00:48Now to be fair, they did fix it a few months ago, came in with their tower, patched it up
00:54and left.
00:54Two weeks later, Monsoon paid a visit.
00:57Four weeks later, the pothole was back.
00:59And this time, it went super sane.
01:02I kept wondering, why does this keep happening?
01:05Everywhere, shitty roads are the norm.
01:07If other countries can make roads that last 20 years, why can't we?
01:11As I kept digging, I realized that it is not because we don't know how to make good roads.
01:15It's because of an interconnected organizational rod.
01:19The infrastructure companies and road work companies also benefit from it.
01:23Corporation engineers benefit from it.
01:24Further down the spiral I went, the worse it got.
01:28You know, cartels and mafias are involved in a bid to loot taxpayer money.
01:32And to do this, they have gone as far as silencing and even taking the lives of whistleblowers who fought
01:38them.
01:39And no, this is not clickbait.
01:40It's a real research portrait of the system that governs our movement, our lives.
01:49Stay with me, because in this video, we are going to break it down all for you.
01:58Now, let me take you back to the 1970s.
02:01So, in 1976, a company called Recondo, run by two Parsi brothers, had built a 2.5 kilometer road in
02:07Pune.
02:08They did it using hot mix technology, which is just heating those small crushed stones called aggregates
02:14and combining it with high-grade molten bitumen.
02:17What's key is the quality of the ingredients.
02:20They were so confident in their work that they literally gave Pune Municipal Corporation a written guarantee
02:26if any problem appeared in the next 10 years, they would reconstruct the entire road at their own cost.
02:34Now, that was 50 years ago and it's the origin story of the JM Road in Pune.
02:38Now, you may have already heard of the story, but stay with me as this road reveals a deeper problem
02:44in the system.
02:44And yes, it's still as smooth as ever.
02:46There were minor maintenance in 2010 and 2014, but that's it.
02:50Locals drive on it every single day and I've never complained.
02:54Take a wild guess on how many contracts those Parsi brothers got after that.
03:00Zero.
03:01Why zero?
03:02I'll reveal that soon, but keep this at the back of your mind.
03:07Meanwhile, let's look at the condition of roads everywhere else.
03:11India has the second largest road network in the world with about 6.6 million kilometers.
03:17Now, this is a stat we boast of all over media.
03:20And according to a report, only 60% are in good condition.
03:24Now, you and I have both driven on these good roads and we all know how good these good roads
03:29are after that first monsoon rain hits.
03:31But that seems to imply that there's 2.6 million kilometers of roads that are downright bad.
03:36Which is crazy because we spend over 2 to 2.5 lakh crores on road construction and maintenance annually.
03:44That is 30 billion dollars every single year.
03:48For comparison, Japan spends about 50 billion dollars annually.
03:53But their roads last 15 to 20 years on an average.
03:57Ours, 2 to 5 years before they need major repairs.
04:01Some roads in tier 2 cities start crumbling within months of inauguration.
04:05The BMC reported 6,758 potholes in only 6 weeks from June to mid-July.
04:11That's 8% higher than previous year's survey.
04:14They call it Mumbai's annual pothole crisis.
04:17In Bihar, 12 bridges collapsed in just 15 days in 2024.
04:22Note that, not 15 years, 15 days.
04:26The Guwani-Sultanganj bridge cost 1,710 crores and collapsed twice during construction.
04:33And the human cost?
04:35Pothole-related crashes in 2023 cost 2,161 deaths.
04:41That's the annual rate that we often seem to hit.
04:44This is a big deal really because roads create movement.
04:49The trade that truly defines every single human.
04:52It's a very basic, fundamental privilege and we don't exactly have it.
04:57So, what is going on?
04:59Is it really that hard to make good roads and maintain it?
05:03I spoke to some civil engineers to get answers and they pointed it out that it's not because
05:07of traffic or heavy vehicles or the various cows taking a stroll.
05:11The number one enemy of the road is simply water.
05:22To understand what's happening, let me show you how a road is exactly made.
05:26Pay attention, this part's very interesting.
05:29See, a road is made up of a few layers.
05:31At the bottom, there's the subgrade, the natural soil compacted to form a foundation.
05:36Above that, the subbase, crushed stones that helps with drainage and moisture.
05:41Then, comes the base course, a denser layer of aggregates and finally, the surface.
05:48That's asphalt or bitumen, the layer your tyres go on first dates with.
05:52Now, when the water seeps through cracks in that top layer, it reaches below and weakens
05:58the subbase, which basically creates voids and when vehicles pass over those weakened spots,
06:05the road collapses and that's your pothole.
06:07In Japan and Germany, they treat these issues with utmost importance and seriousness.
06:12They use waterproofing membranes between layers.
06:15They ensure precise drainage slopes so that the water runs off, not through.
06:19In India though, we use a different strategy altogether.
06:23We create another layer on top made of chewed up gutka paan and that protects the road from
06:29having a long life.
06:30Now, jokes apart, the second villain for a bad road is just heat.
06:37At 45 to 50 degrees, standard bitumen starts softening.
06:42Delhi hit around 49 degrees last year.
06:46Remember those videos from Agra where roads went soft and sticky and tyres left deep impression?
06:51That's basically called bleeding and it happens when we use cheap materials for incompatible
06:56climates.
06:57Now, if you look at roads in Dubai on the other hand, where summer temperatures regularly exceed
07:0250 degrees Celsius, they don't melt there.
07:05Roads in Death Valley, California don't melt.
07:08Why?
07:09They use polymer modified bitumen rated for 70 degrees and above.
07:13It costs 30% more than standard bitumen, the type that we use.
07:18Okay, so it's simple.
07:20We know the enemies, we just need a way to beat them, right?
07:23And that's why the Indian roads congress has specifications for all of it.
07:28Except, a study found that bitumen samples from Indian roads often fail to meet those specifications.
07:36Okay, so starting to see the pattern here.
07:39The issue isn't a lack of knowledge or resources?
07:41But this, nope, as expected, it's a systemic rot or political one.
07:48And I guess, this is where the interesting bits of our story actually begin.
07:53To understand this rot, we just have to follow the money.
08:04So in India, road construction works on a tender system.
08:07Government puts out a tender, contractors bid and the lowest bidder wins.
08:11Sounds fair, right?
08:12Competition drives down the costs.
08:14The idea is to efficiently use the taxpayer's money.
08:17Except, what transpires is something completely different.
08:22Meet contractor A, Radhika.
08:24She's an honest worker and she looks at the project specifications
08:27and estimates a budget of 100 crores in order to do it properly.
08:31So she places a bid of 105 crores, which is a reasonable margin for their efforts.
08:36Now meet contractor B.
08:38Let's call him Sharmaji.
08:39Now he is an opportunist and knows how to cut corners using cheap labour,
08:44substandard bitumen and employ various other tricks to get the job done in 70 crores.
08:49Of course, he has to get past inspections.
08:52But luckily, he's resourceful and knows which official has a secret alcohol problem,
08:57which one needs a new car for his daughter's wedding and so on.
09:01Buying them is a lot cheaper than passing inspections.
09:03So his bid, 80 crores.
09:06Now, who wins the tender?
09:09The opportunist, every single time.
09:12Now from the government's perspective, they've just saved a lot of money, right?
09:16Nope.
09:17Because here's where the irony kicks in.
09:19Now, the honest contractor would have spent 105 crores and built a road that probably lasts 20-30 years.
09:27Sharmaji builds a road that lasts 2 years and over the next 2 decades,
09:32there will be around 9 repair cycles, each costing around 30 crores,
09:36which brings the total cost to 340 crores.
09:40Taxpayer money is spent efficiently, right?
09:44So, it is literally 3.4 times more expensive.
09:48But since each tender is separate, each budget line is different,
09:52and each year has its own allocation, nobody connects the dots, at least officially.
09:57Now, with a cheap road, the contractor makes money 10 times instead of once.
10:03The politician gets to announce development work before every election.
10:08Officials collect their commission 10 times.
10:11Remember Recondo?
10:12The two Parsi brothers who built a long-lasting road?
10:16Now you see why they were dumb.
10:18They reduced their profits and the commission of every official involved by a huge margin.
10:23Why?
10:24Because their primary focus was to serve the people what they wanted.
10:28But wait.
10:28Let's say an outlier, a one-off miracle happens.
10:33A good contractor wins and builds a proper road.
10:35It should last at least 20 years, right?
10:39Nope.
10:40Because there's another problem.
10:41After the road is built, various departments come and dig it up.
10:46Water department in January.
10:47Road department patches it in February.
10:50Electricity department digs it up again in March.
10:52Gas company in June.
10:54Telecom lays fibres in September.
10:56Same road.
10:57Five different agencies.
10:58Each one tears up the work of the previous one.
11:01Local reports from Bangalore found that most road failures originate from utility cuts
11:06and almost a third of all potholes start where someone dug up the road.
11:11Now look, I really wanted to show you this chaos, not just tell you about it.
11:15Because that's the only way to understand how absurd the system actually is.
11:19Thankfully, it's gotten easier to show than tell.
11:22Honestly, every time we put out a video, we get tons of comments asking,
11:27how are you making these visuals?
11:29Well, we create them to do justice to the story.
11:33And no, it is not through endless prompting and brute force iterations.
11:37Now, do you remember back when the best videos AI could generate
11:41were just pixelated abstractions of nonsense?
11:44Of course you do because it's barely been a minute.
11:47And yet, AI tools have evolved rapidly in that minute.
11:51And that's where one of our recent favorite tools, Higgspere, comes in.
11:55We've been playing around with Higgspere's Cinema Studio and true to the name,
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12:07and lets us surgically transform every normal video I shoot into pure cinematic magic.
12:13Cinema Studio is a one-stop factory to bring all your best ideas to life.
12:17From composition, lenses, lighting, mood, camera movement,
12:22you can play around with everything until you find the right fit.
12:26Here, you're not animating an image,
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12:56Now, if you look at other countries, like Singapore and Netherlands,
12:59they solve this with utility corridors, designated tunnels,
13:03where all underground utilities run together.
13:06When you need to repair something,
13:07you access the tunnels so the road stays intact for decades.
13:11Now, India has this technology.
13:13Some smart city projects have implemented it,
13:15but for existing roads, we just keep digging.
13:18In India, a road is not an infrastructure.
13:21A road is an ATM, and potholes are the pin code.
13:24It's actually a perfect business model.
13:27Roads fail, but the system thrives.
13:30In put in fact,
13:31UR Facility, a blacklisted firm,
13:33was awarded a 6 crore contract by the PMC.
13:36They claimed they'd served their ban period,
13:39but civic activist Prashant Rangkhambe
13:42filed an RTI and proved otherwise.
13:44They got the contract while still blacklisted.
13:47A clear case of corruption was exposed.
13:49Another firm, RPS Infra Projects,
13:51was blacklisted in 2016.
13:53They served the ban till 2019,
13:56then bagged a 1,500 crore contract by 2024.
14:00This is a company that carried out repairs
14:02on Himalayan foot overbridge at CSMT in 2013,
14:05which crashed 6 years later
14:07and caused several deaths.
14:08They got away with it because in 2017,
14:10another agency carried out extensive repairs
14:13on the same foot overbridge,
14:15but the blame game wasn't definitive,
14:17so they kept growing.
14:19Oh, and I spoke to a bureaucrat off the record,
14:21and they said,
14:23everyone in the system knows,
14:25from the junior engineer to the minister,
14:28but changing it would mean fewer contracts,
14:30fewer kickbacks,
14:31less money flowing through the system.
14:33Nobody wants to fix what makes them rich.
14:36It actually got me thinking,
14:38why does no one fight back?
14:40Everyone knows about the corruption,
14:42so why hasn't it gotten better?
14:44And the answer was unsettling,
14:47because the system has a shield around it
14:49which comprises of cartels and mafias.
14:57It's November 27th, 2003.
15:00A civil engineer named Satyendra Dubey
15:03is heading home after a wedding.
15:04His driver's car had a dead battery,
15:07so he took a rickshaw instead.
15:08Except, he never made it home.
15:11His driver would later find his body
15:13shot dead on the side of the road.
15:16The official story is that
15:18it's a robbery gone wrong,
15:19but critics argue that it's a cover.
15:22And if you knew his backstory,
15:24you'd argue the same.
15:25See, Satyendra Dubey
15:27worked as a project director with NHAI
15:29and had been assigned to a portion
15:30of the golden quadrilateral highway project.
15:33He had uncompromising integrity,
15:36which is why he decided
15:37to expose what he was seeing.
15:40Contractors outsourcing work illegally,
15:42inspection engineers being bribed or intimidated,
15:45carters coordinating to rig bits
15:48and inflate costs.
15:49He compiled everything into a report
15:51and sent it to the prime minister's office.
15:54He made one request,
15:56keep my identity confidential.
15:59They didn't.
16:00His identity was forwarded
16:02to the very people he had accused.
16:04And not long after,
16:05his life was lost on a robbery gone wrong.
16:09Satyendra Dubey is remembered
16:11as India's first major whistleblower.
16:13His death sparked public outrage
16:16that eventually led
16:17to the Whistleblowers Protection Act of 2014.
16:20It's imperfect and under-implemented,
16:22but it was a giant step
16:24in one of the foundational pillars
16:26of democracy,
16:27that's whistleblowing.
16:28He wasn't the last.
16:29In 2008,
16:31Manoj Kumar Gupta,
16:32an engineer in UP,
16:33refused to give in to extortion
16:35linked to a ruling party MLA
16:37named Shekhar Tiwari.
16:38The MLA had him kidnapped from home,
16:41tortured,
16:42and then dumped his body
16:43outside a police station.
16:46Tiwari received a life sentence,
16:48a rare case,
16:48where the system
16:49actually delivered consequences.
16:51In 2024,
16:53a former Bangalore city councillor
16:55filed a complaint
16:55against BBMP officials
16:57and contractors alleging
16:59that they had misappropriated
17:0146,300 crores meant
17:04for road development
17:05over the previous decade.
17:07That's an insane amount of money,
17:10and we clearly don't see it
17:12in the roads of Bangalore.
17:13The complaint included
17:154,100 pages of evidence
17:17showing that up to 75%
17:20of funds were siphoned off.
17:22The case,
17:23still ongoing,
17:24might outlast some of the roads
17:26mentioned in the complaint.
17:27So yeah,
17:29this is the rot,
17:30three layers of it.
17:31First,
17:32cartels that rig the bidding process
17:34before any work begins.
17:36Second,
17:37bureaucratic corruption
17:38that looks the other way around
17:40during execution.
17:41Third,
17:42absent enforcement
17:43that fails to hold
17:45anyone accountable after.
17:47Fix them layer by layer,
17:48and only then
17:49can we start transitioning
17:51from the current
17:52dysfunctional network
17:53to roads
17:54that actually last.
17:56No,
17:56it is not going to be easy,
17:57but it's not impossible either
17:59because other countries
18:00have faced
18:01each of these problems
18:03albeit individually
18:04and solved them.
18:05Maybe we can borrow
18:06some of those models
18:07and adapt them
18:08for our country's context.
18:10Which brings us to
18:15The first layer of rot
18:17is cartelization,
18:18and the only way
18:19to break that
18:20is to make it more dangerous
18:21to stay inside the cartel
18:22than to leave it.
18:24Japan is actually
18:25the world champion at this.
18:27Their construction industry
18:28was notorious for bids,
18:30taking cartels
18:31called dango.
18:32For decades,
18:33contractors would meet
18:34before tenders,
18:35decide who would win
18:36and set prices accordingly.
18:38The government was literally
18:39losing billions,
18:40but then in 2006,
18:43the Japan Fair Trade Commission
18:44introduced something
18:45called a leniency program.
18:47The rules were very simple.
18:48If you're a part of a cartel
18:49and you come forward first,
18:51full immunity.
18:52No fines,
18:53no criminal case,
18:54second person to confess
18:55gets a deduced penalty,
18:56third person,
18:57smaller reduction,
18:58everyone who stays silent
19:00risks massive punishment later.
19:02The effect was actually immediate.
19:04Inside the cartels,
19:05the mood shifted
19:06from brotherhood to paranoia.
19:08Every member started wondering,
19:09who's going to snitch first
19:11in almost every major cartel case
19:13in Japan since then
19:14has started
19:15because someone inside panicked
19:16and filed for leniency.
19:18The incentive basically
19:19to stay in the cartel flipped.
19:20Suddenly,
19:21it was safer to leave.
19:23Japan didn't wait
19:23for whistleblowers
19:24to appear out of conscience.
19:26They manufactured them
19:27through incentives.
19:28Then comes layer two,
19:30the bureaucratic corruption.
19:31And in this regard,
19:32Singapore is literally
19:33the opposite of India.
19:35At the center
19:36is an agency
19:37called the Corrupt Practices
19:39Investigation Bureau
19:40or CPIB.
19:41Small,
19:42powerful
19:42and structurally
19:44insulated from politics.
19:45If a prime minister
19:46ever tries to block
19:47an investigation,
19:49the CPIP director
19:50can bypass them
19:51and go directly
19:52to the president.
19:53That's literally written
19:54into their constitution.
19:56Under Singapore's
19:57Prevention of Corruption Act,
19:59any gratification
20:00given to a public servant
20:01is presumed corrupt.
20:02The official has to prove
20:05it wasn't a bribe,
20:06not the other way around.
20:08There's no small gift exception,
20:10no chai pani gray zone,
20:11both giver and taker
20:12face consequences.
20:13That legal presumption
20:15changes everything.
20:16Instead of the state
20:18struggling to prove wrongdoing,
20:20the burden shifts
20:20to the accused.
20:21They also attack
20:22the friction points
20:23where Indian corruption thrives,
20:25things like files
20:26sitting idle on desks,
20:27delayed signatures
20:28and the classic,
20:29oh, sahab is in a meeting.
20:31They simply turned
20:32every single thing digital,
20:34every approval tracked,
20:36every delay visible,
20:37trails literally everywhere.
20:39See, it's not that
20:40corruption disappears,
20:41it's that corruption
20:42becomes expensive
20:43and risky.
20:45The expected value flips.
20:46Now, finally,
20:47once you clear
20:48those two layers,
20:48you need to maintain it,
20:50which is where
20:51the third layer
20:52of rot comes in,
20:53a lack of effective
20:55enforcement models.
20:57Now, again,
20:58Singapore is a useful
20:59case study this time
21:00for how they organize
21:01the entire transport ecosystem.
21:03So, they create
21:05a national body
21:05that's the Land Transport Authority.
21:07One agency responsible
21:09for planning,
21:11designing,
21:11building
21:12and maintaining roads.
21:14One set of standards,
21:15one gatekeeper
21:16for permits,
21:17one point of accountability
21:19when something fails.
21:20Every contractor
21:22who wants to touch
21:22a public road
21:23submits a detailed plan,
21:25traffic management,
21:27safety protocols,
21:28surface restoration.
21:29The LTI approves,
21:31monitors and inspects,
21:32no ambiguity
21:33about who's responsible.
21:35Compare that to India
21:36where roads fall
21:37under central government,
21:38state PWDs,
21:40municipal corporations,
21:41panchayats,
21:42NHAI,
21:43BRO and more.
21:45Each with different standards,
21:46different budgets,
21:47different accountability structures.
21:49See, when a road fails,
21:51everyone points
21:52at everyone else.
21:55The blame game
21:56goes in circles
21:57and pothole-related
21:59accidents continue
22:00to happen.
22:01Now, these are all
22:02some starter points.
22:04I'm just looking
22:05into the issue.
22:05I don't know
22:06the means to solve the rot,
22:07but I can try
22:08and push for more initiative,
22:10both political
22:11and public.
22:13Because,
22:13see, the technology exists,
22:15the knowledge exists,
22:16the money exists,
22:17what doesn't exist
22:18is the will.
22:19But maybe we can demand
22:20that into existence too.
22:22What do you think?
22:26Look, I know this whole video
22:27is a little depressing.
22:28The system is rigged,
22:30the incentives are broken,
22:31the people who could fix it
22:32benefit from keeping it broken.
22:34But you need to realize
22:35that a part of enforcement
22:36is on the people as well.
22:38In many countries,
22:40civil society groups
22:41run road watch coalitions,
22:43tracking projects,
22:44budgets,
22:45physical progress,
22:45publicly shaming contractors
22:48who cut corners,
22:49filing litigations
22:50when targets are missed,
22:51that's on us.
22:52So every time a local MLA
22:54cuts a ribbon on a new road,
22:56we have to ask
22:56how long the road
22:58is supposed to last,
22:59ask whether there was
23:00an independent audit,
23:02make uncomfortable questions
23:04the mainstream.
23:05On top of that,
23:06there are apps
23:07that exist to report potholes,
23:09use them,
23:10document everything,
23:11create pressure through data.
23:13And most of all,
23:15we need patience.
23:16We need to accept
23:17that real,
23:18actual change takes time.
23:20Now, Japan didn't build
23:21its road system overnight.
23:23Singapore did not transform
23:24in one electoral cycle.
23:25See, the question is not
23:26whether we can fix Indian roads.
23:28We definitely can.
23:30The question is
23:31whether we are willing
23:31to pay the upfront costs
23:33financially and politically
23:34to build a system
23:35that actually works.
23:36Because we are already paying.
23:39We are paying in accidents,
23:41in time lost,
23:42in vehicle repairs,
23:43in logistics costs,
23:45in lives.
23:46We are just paying
23:46the wrong people.
23:48That pothole on my commute
23:50is not that because
23:51the contractor was incompetent,
23:53it's there because
23:54someone, somewhere
23:55is making money
23:57from it being there.
23:58But I have this hopeful feeling
24:01that very soon
24:02it's going to be gone.
24:03We are going to make sure of it.
24:04I am going to make sure of it.
24:18As a message,