Monday, September 12, 2005
Tamil Nadu vs. West Bengal: Roads and Directions
Monday, September 12, 2005 11:06:51 PM (India Standard Time, UTC+05:30) ( )
I am constantly getting drawn into (or inciting) heated debates about the relative merits of West Bengal (north) vs. Tamil Nadu (south).   Now that I am a 3 day veteran of Chennai, let me throw the following into the mix:
 
Roads:  Chennai/Tamil Nadu definitely win this one.  A few hours on the road in Kolkata and I have back aches and bruises. In Chennai the major roads are as good as many in the US.
 
Directions/Taxi Travel:  I never had a single problem going anywhere in Kolkata (and I went all over the place).  In Chennai I have a hard time getting anywhere.  One of the main streets (if not the main street) is Anna Salai.   NOBODY seems to have heard of this street.  It runs straight through the city.  It is visible from miles out in space.  None of the 6 auto-rickshaw drivers I have employed so far have had any luck finding and address on this street.  Most had to be guided to it.   Some could only refer to it by the British name (Mount Road).  The building numbers were non-sequential, with some building having a hard time which number was the old or the new number.
 
Government:  A tangent of the above point is that in Kolkata they seemed to have properly moved on from the British period.   Names were changed and life went on.  In the south, it seems the government renamed everything from the name of the city down to the numbers on buildings, but nobody seemed convinced that the change was for real, so everything has either a double name or a double number (old and/or new).   It seems that the Bengalis really trust or like their government.  They plant communist flags all over the place unhesitantly praise it, even in the face of corruption.  Additionally, they treat Chandra Bose with more reverence than any other bureaucrat I have ever heard of.
 
Am I wrong?
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