by LYDIA POLGREEN
New Delhi — The trains arrive with a whisper. The doors slide open and a puff of refrigerated air confronts the city’s summertime miasma. A bell dings, the doors close and the train whisks its passengers to the next stop.
This sequence of events might seem utterly ordinary on train platforms in Berlin or Bangkok, Stockholm or Singapore. But here in the sweaty heart of India’s northernmost megacity, the runaway success of the city’s almost complete subway system, known as the Metro, is a feat bordering on miraculous, and it offers new hope that India’s perpetually decrepit urban infrastructure can be dragged into the 21st century.
New York Times for more