Transportation Survey Of West Pakistan 1962

In the 1950s Pakistan was generally considered to be a country that would remain among the poorest in the world, but economic development in the decade to follow exceeded all expectations. Gustav Papanek, in the first thorough analysis of this achievement, shows how Pakistan, partly by design and partly by accident, arrived at a successful blend of private initiative and government intervention in the economy. This book, which includes the only comprehensive industrial survey of an underdeveloped country, sheds considerable light on the problems facing nations in similar circumstances.

This book argues that road-building was naturalised in the twentieth century to the point of common sense, integrating roadbuilding into a system of climate change denial hidden within a broad international development imperative. But if we can ‘read’ South Asian roads as forms of governance and knowledge, we can challenge the region’s established geopolitical narratives, and the idea of a never-ending future. Highways to the End of the World explores the political economy of these ideas by focusing on the history of this phenomenon, and on the road-builders of South Asia themselves. How do these flamboyant and controversial ‘roadmen’ think about their work and the future of the planet? What do roads do, and why? And how did they become central to the region’s nationalist and developmental projects in the first place? Simpson’s fascinating ethnographic account takes us from fume-filled toll booths in the heart of India, via overworked government offices in Pakistan, to pharaonic bridges in the Indian Ocean. Simpson follows the money, explores the politics of evidence, and argues against the utopian hyperbole of present-day ‘road talk’, finding both humanitarian crises and freewheeling international capital in the hedgerows. Roads have never been so interesting, or so controversial.