In this week’s issue of the magazine, Akash Kapur writes about the transformative effect of a highway on the small South Indian village of Kadapakkam. The East Coast Road—smooth, two-laned, and outfitted with reflector lights and wide shoulders—replaced an old route of potholed dirt. The new road connected the cities of the region with the formerly remote countryside, and in Kadapakkam it changed everything—tea shops gave way to glitzy restaurants and stores, and homes, commercial complexes, and schools began to pop up in the surrounding fields. The road has saved many lives by improving access to hospitals, but it has also brought traffic and reckless drivers, with accompanying death and injury.
Kapur speaks with a man named Ganesh, who reflects on the thoroughfare and the new customers, clad in jeans and sunglasses, that it brought to a local tea shop. “Before, people like this never stopped in Kadapakkam,” Ganesh said. “They would just drive through without even noticing.”
Magnum’s Olivia Arthur photographed the road and its environs for the magazine. Here’s a look at her work.
Photographs by Olivia Arthur/Magnum.
