One of the speeches that I often go back to again and again is something that @TuckerCarlson gave at Budapest in 2021.
The main theme of it was simple: architecture is a verdict on how much the people in a place are valued. You learn more about a regime from its buildings than from its press releases.
That framing changed how I look at "infrastructure." Someone decided what our kids will grow up seeing every day. Someone decided whether the background of life should be calming or abrasive. Most citizens will never meet the people who run their country, but they move through those decisions every morning on the way to work.
In India especially this hits a nerve. The average day is flyovers over potholes, glass office parks facing broken footpaths, railway and bus stations that function despite the chaos, hoardings and cables fighting for sky. The subtext is familiar: get it done first; think about dignity later.
At the same time you can see how tuned people are to good infrastructure and aesthetics. Walk into the old Victoria Terminus hall with its stone arches, stained glass and carved ceilings. Drive along Marine Drive or the new coastal road at sunset and watch people sitting by the sea, quietly facing the horizon. Sit in Cubbon Park or Lodhi Garden on a weekday evening, or walk through the restored lanes of Fort Kochi or Pondicherry's White Town. The mood shifts in seconds. People look up, take photos, slow down. They can feel that the environment is lifting them a little.
You notice this even more when us Indians travel abroad for a week or two. Very quickly a different baseline settles in: trains and buses that line up with the platform, footpaths you can walk on without planning every step, crossings that protect pedestrians, public buildings where the lighting, signage and seating assume the average person deserves comfort and clarity. When we fly back, this is what our body misses first upon the first jolt at the airport exit, the first broken pavement, the first chaotic junction.
These photos are from the new Ram Janmabhoomi temple. Whatever your politics, it is hard to stand inside this kind of work and not feel something shift. The stone, the carvings, the proportions, the light—you can feel centuries of Indian craft, geometry and faith compressed into one space.
Which is why our everyday built environment feels so jarring. We are a civilisation that can still produce this level of beauty, yet most Indians would be untouched with this in their daily life. We need to let this sensibility leak into roads, schools, stations, courts, libraries, parks.