An entrepreneur and investor from Mumbai has praised Switzerland’s connectivity and public transport network, calling it exemplary planning. Abhijeet Kumar, Co-Founding Partner at ah! Ventures Fund, shared a LinkedIn post where he compared Switzerland’s country planning with India’s chaos.
“I have travelled to 36 countries and after my recent trip to Switzerland, I finally understood what “country planning” actually means,” wrote the IIT Bombay-educated founder.
Where Switzerland wins
Kumar said that Switzerland is a country where people can actually commute and travel without it feeling like an Olympic challenge. This is thanks to the planning and infrastructure of the landlocked Alpine nation.
He noted how Switzerland is so well connected with various mode of transport that a person need not walk more than five minutes to reach either a bus, a train, or a tram.
“The entire country is insanely well connected through trains, buses, trams and even boats. Wherever you want to go, you are probably just a 5-minute walk away from some mode of public transport,” he said.
For people who like to walk, however, Switzerland is great too. Kumar noted how the European country has no broken footpaths or potholes on the road.
“And if you enjoy walking, Switzerland feels like heaven. You can literally walk for miles continuously without broken footpaths, random barricades, surprise potholes or a bike suddenly appearing from another dimension,” he said.
He also highlighted great network coverage, even at higher altitudes. “What shocked me even more was that mountains at 10,000+ feet had better mobile connectivity than many urban areas in developing countries. Imagine climbing a mountain and still being able to join a Zoom call you were trying to escape from,” wrote the angel investor.
Where India needs improvement
Kumar compared Switzerland’s calm with India’s chaos, saying that neither drivers nor pedestrians feel safe in India. “Then comes India… We build roads where drivers don’t feel safe driving, pedestrians don’t feel safe walking and traffic signals themselves seem confused about their purpose in life,” he wrote.
In his LinkedIn post, he pointed out that commuting is not straightforward in most Indian cities. Instead, it requires driving skills, survival instincts, emotional stability, and a basic understanding of quantum physics, Kumar joked.
He ended his post on a note of optimism, saying that “if humans can build cities like Switzerland, humans can definitely build better Indian cities too.”
