Photo: Premshree Pillai(flickr)

It must be frustrating to live in a major city but face daily power outages, water shortages and the stench of manure from urban-dwelling farm animals. Any reprise from this life would be welcome.

In India, gated communities are fast becoming popular for the people that can afford them. But the protected oasis provided by many of these communities is a quick fix to India's infrastructure problems, rather than a long-term solution.

In recent years India has witnessed a boom in the upper-middle class, much of it due to outsourced jobs from the U.S. and Europe. This population can afford some of the luxuries not available to all Indians, such as reliably running water and electricity, clean streets, even 24-hour security.

They also demand special services, maids, chauffeurs and gardeners. So over time, manual laborers who populate neighborhoods these nouveau riche were trying to flee simply relocate to locations where jobs are available.

“Townships are just one example of how Indian city planners increasingly focus on the upper strata of society and ignore the vast majority of city dwellers,” believes Krishna Menon, director of the TVB School of Habitat Studies in New Dehli.

Menon also points out that gated communities gated reinforce India's traditional caste system, a system the country is trying to shed. A recent New York Times article on India's gated communities suggests that these enclosed home sites, "pressed up against the slums that serve them, has underscored more than ever the stark gulf between those worlds.”

It's not that conditions for the poor are becoming worse. But the lack of infrastructure is becoming more apparent as gated communities face some of the same problems that Indian cities do. A story in Britain's Guardian newspaper says about Central Park, a new community outside of New Dehli,

The power fails, the air-conditioning switches off and the taps run dry. Unscrupulous developers fail to deliver, confident that they will never be prosecuted by India's slow-moving legal system.

Gated communities may provide families with more security, but they don't inoculate residents against the country's deeper structural problems. Since India is the world's largest democracy, where politicians as well as developers are responsive to the upper-middle-class residents, perhaps those residents should use their collective power to bring about changes that would benefit everyone.

Rising gas prices are causing some Californians to head to the border. Photo: Thomas Hawk (flickr)

Rising gas prices are driving Californians to fill up in Mexico, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Gas is approaching $5 a gallon in San Diego — twice as much as it is in neighboring Tijuana. Many Californians not only filling up in Mexico, they're even installing extra-large fuel tanks in pickups and work vehicles for later use, often bringing back enough to sell in California for a large profit.

Suppliers of fuel tanks and San Diego auto shops are happy at the phenomenal business. For example, fuel tank company Transfer Flow made more than half a million dollars in May alone.

But many Mexicans are unhappy about the “gringo invasion," which has meant long lines at gas stations and diesel shortages. This week, the number of Tijuana stations offering diesel dropped significantly. Many stations are beginning to refuse to serve Americans.

Historically Pemex, the Mexican state oil monopoly, set gas prices along the border within a few cents of U.S. prices, deterring motorists from comparison shopping. But as gas prices have shot up in the U.S., Mexico has kept its prices down with massive government subsidies to keep gas affordable for Mexican citizens. But these subsidies are causing problems for the government's budget. In fact, an additional $20 billion dollar subsidy was added to the Mexican federal budget as an emergency measure in May, as part of an effort bolster the economy.

And because Mexico doesn’t have the refinery capacity to turn their own oil into gasoline, it imports a large percentage of its gas from the U.S.. So by subsidizing the fuel — and then reselling it to U.S. citizens at cheap rates — the Mexican government is losing money any way you look at it.