View from Delhi: Delhi Metro: A splendid New Year present

Delhiwallahs got a splendid New Year present this week when the first leg of a spanking new rail Metro was thrown open to the public in the capital on Christmas eve. It's only a start and it will take another 20 years before the whole of the city is covered, but it's already being hailed as a landmark event that brings Delhi for the first time on par with other world capitals, at least as far as public transport is concerned.

Delhi has never had public transport worth the name. Passengers rely mainly on ancient buses past their prime, most of which are run by surly private operators. There are, of course, autorickshaws, but they are a law unto themselves and cost the moon. They have been on strike for the last two weeks as they don't like the new electronic meters they have been asked to use.

Prime Minister Vajpayee flagged off the first train and travelled 7 kilometre from Shahadara to Tis Hazari, perhaps the most congested part of Delhi.

Before the Metro came along, the journey took 45 minutes. Now it takes just seven minutes and no hassles. The new Metro has been designed and built entirely by men of Indian Railways, with some help from Japanese and South Korean companies who have supplied rolling stock and other items. The first stage covering about 60 kilometres will cost $2 billion and be ready by 2005. The whole metro will be three times as long and may cost or $10 billion.

The Metro is a modern affair with airconditioned underground stations, escalators and hitech elevators. Tickets and passenger control is through automatic machines and entries and exits to stations controlled by flap doors operated by smart cards, just as in Paris and London.

Delhiwallahs started dreaming of a Metro, when they saw what a big change the Calcutta Metro had brought about in the lives of its citizens. The Calcutta Metro took so long to build that many suspected it would never be completed. There were also doubts about what would happen to it after completion. But nothing happened. It is as spick and span as ever and Calcuttans treat it as a kind of jewel handed over to them for safekeeping.

The Delhi Metro was built in four years, two years ahead of schedule, and most of us who live nearby did not even know that it was under construction.

It has been a very efficient operation and although work will go on for another three years before the first phase is ready for use, most Delhiwallahs won't even know that tunnels are being bored right beneath their homes and the parks they use every morning for jogging are actually going to be the nerve-centre of the local metro junction.

Delhi has suddenly become a much more pleasant city than it used to be four or five years ago. The roads look wider and the trees greener. There are flyovers every few furlongs, so many of them, especially in south Delhi, that you rarely come across a traffic light. The police have become friendly too, but that may be because they are now on their best behaviour as election time approaches.

India badly needed a success story after a year in which very little seems to have gone right. The economy is down and so is business. Foreign investors are still in two minds about coming to India. The Delhi Metro is the only thing on the move. Perhaps a sign of better things to come in the coming year?