Tweetoplankton

Float obscurely on the vast ocean of Twitter. Insignificant, but important - contribute to the oxygen.

[Upamanyu Acharya @upamanyuacharya]

"India is overcrowded" is the most successful gaslighting campaign Indian babus ever ran on their own citizens. They underbuilt the country for forty years and convinced 1.4B Indians to blame themselves for it.

Every overcrowded space you've ever queued in is a supply failure the state engineered, not a demographic accident. Five lifts in a hospital, one working. Seven railway counters, one ticketer. Toll plazas, water boards, municipal offices: built once in 1972, patched once in 1996, abandoned ever since. The only exception is airports, and even those lounges are gigafried at peak.

Why did this happen? 4 reasons, none of them are "too many people."

1. Cost of capital. Rupee down 60% against the dollar in two decades. Inflation 5-7% on paper, 8-10% in reality. Risk-free rates above 7%. No rational allocator underwrites a hospital with a 30-year payback under those conditions. Capital flows into software and consumer brands; anything with a 3-5 year ROI window. Parks, ports, metros, dams, schools need multi-decade underwriting that India's macro structurally cannot support.

2. The regulatory stack is engineered to prevent construction. 50+ clearances across municipal, state, and central bodies for any large project, each with its IAS gatekeeper extracting rent. Real builders give up. The only construction happening at scale is therefore illegal, which is exactly why slums mushroom while sanctioned housing projects sit at 15% completion for a decade.

3. The corruption tax. Budget 15-20% of project cost in bakshish before pouring a single slab. Stacked on top of GST, stamp duty, capital gains, property tax, labour cess. Software shops escape it; they ship from a laptop. Anyone touching cement, steel, or land pays the surcharge in cash, off the books, with zero recourse and zero deductibility.

4. State capacity has collapsed into pure friction. GST portal crashes on filing deadlines. MCA21 is a relic. Every regulator (SEBI, RBI, IRDAI, FSSAI, BIS) optimises for CYA, never throughput. Babus paid 1990s salaries to administer 2026 complexity respond rationally by doing nothing.

India's perpetual undercapacity is a capital allocation story the political class would rather you never learn. The 1.4B is a feature. The people running the country are the bug. Until cost of capital drops, the regulatory fat gets gutted, and the corruption surcharge gets squeezed out, the lifts and the counters and the hospitals will stay exactly as broken as they were when your grandfather first complained about them in 1987.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@TOIBengaluru @timesofindia This is a dogwhistle, a tacit helping hand to amplify the message. Classic colour rev / gen z playbook by you know who.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@stefdhrhsf Yes. If not left with subpar comfortable choices.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@nomad_grj @ParthVa53135321 It is better to aim high and then fall short than not try at all and continue with antique infra like earlier govts, regardless of what crabs and status quoists like you say. I'm pretty sure people like you fill our babucracy and temper outcomes of progressive govts.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@nomad_grj @ParthVa53135321 You are not thinking. It's easier to achieve the latter on dedicated greenfield lines purpose built for HSR/SHSR than making existing tracks compliant for SHSR even if the rolling stock is capable. It's general babudom, general indian incompetence and poor systems.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@antoons22 It's the Chinese auto threat that's making em lose their minds and design sensibilities.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@RGxAlpha @IndianTechGuide Simple... Slums are poor optimization of limited land resources and complicates, infra and real estate in general causing artificial scarcity --> inflated housing prices vis a vis purchasing power. Slums should have no place in modern India, period.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@RachnaRkv @MattooShashank With dense people like you cramming the social media airways, validating that really seems far fetched. So, in a way, you're right.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@AndyCoo10257479 @MattooShashank @SAMaskeri Fiction writing when commenting on real politics often ends up making the author looking plain dumb and pretentious. It's a world where they're unable to impose their will of the word.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@omarali50 @parwalkibarfi @intentionalisms The guy arguing with you in this thread is a good example to the useful idiots you alluded to. Their contribution to this sordid affair is unmistakable.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@YRanaraja Fine. But what are you even saying? Putting 2-3 random statements in the same tweet don't make them co-related. It's as pointless as saying 'good morning' to delinquents in the region instead of asking them to mend their ways. But carry on... just like those you're covering for.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@0007ferrero @prathgodbole @PrasunNagar @cbkwgl Yes. But it was systemic, and within a similar cultural and technological context due to civilisational proximity. It's like indic powers learning from each other. In contrast inter-civilizational borrowing was more ad-hoc and organic... unless done in mission mode like meiji.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@prathgodbole @0007ferrero @PrasunNagar @cbkwgl Results could have been different. But that would have needed defuedalization, a change in mindset, more robust institutions (a sort of indic meiji reformation). Would have needed some time, stability, breathing room to achieve this transformation. Unfortunately, no such luxury

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@Vidyut Maybe you can't. But India already is. Implosion of the neighborhood rogue state will certainly help.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@AdelleNaz India has to better things to do than facilitate bad faith negotiations between hegemonic states and religious theocracies.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@Sharanyashettyy @TheSignOfFive I think the ugly engineering college aesthetic has taken over in the last two decades due to the primacy of IT. It's never challenged even after college is done. Poor overall fitness make everything worse.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@TheSignOfFive @Sharanyashettyy Because any sort of beauty is considered vanity - whether it is looks, fitness, grooming, fashion, interiors, architecture, urban infra, product design, etc. This has led to an overall poor visual standard, which most people find comfort in. Tardy mindset, ugly surroundings.

[Tweetoplankton @hydroneil]

@internetdoIlar @razibkhan No sepoy. The world has changed. Being goody two shoes in a country built by genocidal slavers and brown-nosing those who pathologically hate you, is no longer going to get you the pats on the back like in the past. Have the balls to be disliked.