> I don't think India has ghost cities in the way you mean.
"Ghost city" in this context almost always means "ghost district" or a bunch of ghost projects located in close proximity. I'm not sure about India, but in China, this is mostly the pattern (e.g. the new-town Kangbashi district of Ordos, or Tianjin's Yujiapu). We are not talking about actual ghost cities (Ordos and Tianjin would not qualify as such).
> I don't think India has ghost cities in the way you mean
There are plenty. Lots of Indian developers collapse due to corruption tangles or inability to secure financing, for example Jaypee Wish Town in NOIDA [0] or the New Chandigarh project in Punjab [1]
Builders will take down payments from buyers and start construction, but might run out of money, get caught up in some corruption scandal, or fail financial compliance checks now that India has been cracking down on bad loans after the IL&FS almost collapsed in 2018.
Luckily, India had UChicago and Harvard trained economic policymakers like Raghuram Rajan, Arvind Subramanian, and Krishnamurthy Subramanian (guys who if they decided to take American citizenship could have become head of the IMF or WB like their peers Ajay Banga and Gita Gopinath) reform the entire banking and finance sector in India. (And in all honestly, it looks like India might hit a similar bust in the next couple years now that the CEA is politically selected backbenchers now)
Vietnam has hit the exact same hurdle India's economy hit in the 2010-17 stagflation and China during the 2015-16 financial crisis - high capex spending but very low consumer spending leaving it open to backlash caused by FDI variability.
Lots of middle class Vietnamese have purchased condos or houses, but the builders collapsed or are in receivership. SCB (Truong's bank) is one of those banks financing these projects.
Unlike China or India, the backbench of experienced policymakers in Vietnam is kinda empty, as most development in the 1980s-2000s was done by international development agencies, and the rest was basically privatized and done by Korean, Japanese, and Chinese companies (eg. The incomplete subway systems in HCMC and Hanoi built by Japan and China respectively). And unlike China, Vietnam is still fairly early in the value chain with major players like Intel considering leaving [2], and unlike India, Vietnam doesn't have a strong consumer or tertiary sector that can cushion the blow [3]
A similar stagnation hit China in the 1990s after the Tiannamen Square massacre, but was resolved by allowing laisse faire capitalism and rolling out the red carpet for foreign and local investors, but the winning faction in this battle is much more skeptical of the anarcho-capitalism that arose in Vietnam in the 2010s.
> There are plenty. Lots of Indian developers collapse due to corruption tangles or inability to secure financing, for example Jaypee Wish Town in NOIDA [0] or the New Chandigarh project in Punjab [1]
Builders scamming isn't infrequent. But surely the scale is no where near that high to be comparable with Chinese ghost towns[1]? From where I am, Bangalore, I do come across a buildings half constructed or abandoned, but that's completely different from whole towns half/fully built but totally unoccupied. What am I missing here?
I had the exact same reaction as d3vmax - and quoting one paywalled article about a failed builder does not make “ghost cities” a thing in India. Yes there are fraudsters who cheat people and never build anything, but India does not have the same kind of ghost cities that China does.
seanmcdirmid|1 year ago
"Ghost city" in this context almost always means "ghost district" or a bunch of ghost projects located in close proximity. I'm not sure about India, but in China, this is mostly the pattern (e.g. the new-town Kangbashi district of Ordos, or Tianjin's Yujiapu). We are not talking about actual ghost cities (Ordos and Tianjin would not qualify as such).
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
alephnerd|1 year ago
There are plenty. Lots of Indian developers collapse due to corruption tangles or inability to secure financing, for example Jaypee Wish Town in NOIDA [0] or the New Chandigarh project in Punjab [1]
Builders will take down payments from buyers and start construction, but might run out of money, get caught up in some corruption scandal, or fail financial compliance checks now that India has been cracking down on bad loans after the IL&FS almost collapsed in 2018.
Luckily, India had UChicago and Harvard trained economic policymakers like Raghuram Rajan, Arvind Subramanian, and Krishnamurthy Subramanian (guys who if they decided to take American citizenship could have become head of the IMF or WB like their peers Ajay Banga and Gita Gopinath) reform the entire banking and finance sector in India. (And in all honestly, it looks like India might hit a similar bust in the next couple years now that the CEA is politically selected backbenchers now)
Vietnam has hit the exact same hurdle India's economy hit in the 2010-17 stagflation and China during the 2015-16 financial crisis - high capex spending but very low consumer spending leaving it open to backlash caused by FDI variability.
Lots of middle class Vietnamese have purchased condos or houses, but the builders collapsed or are in receivership. SCB (Truong's bank) is one of those banks financing these projects.
Unlike China or India, the backbench of experienced policymakers in Vietnam is kinda empty, as most development in the 1980s-2000s was done by international development agencies, and the rest was basically privatized and done by Korean, Japanese, and Chinese companies (eg. The incomplete subway systems in HCMC and Hanoi built by Japan and China respectively). And unlike China, Vietnam is still fairly early in the value chain with major players like Intel considering leaving [2], and unlike India, Vietnam doesn't have a strong consumer or tertiary sector that can cushion the blow [3]
A similar stagnation hit China in the 1990s after the Tiannamen Square massacre, but was resolved by allowing laisse faire capitalism and rolling out the red carpet for foreign and local investors, but the winning faction in this battle is much more skeptical of the anarcho-capitalism that arose in Vietnam in the 2010s.
[0] - https://www.thequint.com/my-report/i-dont-know-if-ill-get-ou...
[1] - https://www.gmada.gov.in/en/new-chandigarh
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-shelves-planned-chi...
[3] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.CON.PRVT.ZS?location...
vishnugupta|1 year ago
Builders scamming isn't infrequent. But surely the scale is no where near that high to be comparable with Chinese ghost towns[1]? From where I am, Bangalore, I do come across a buildings half constructed or abandoned, but that's completely different from whole towns half/fully built but totally unoccupied. What am I missing here?
[1] https://interestingengineering.com/culture/chinas-ghost-citi...
selimthegrim|1 year ago
gooftop|1 year ago