The Hindu Business Line : Corridors in the corridors of power

Suddenly, corridors seem to be everywhere. Inspired by the success of the Delhi Metro, India and Japan have agreed to build an industrial corridor, reads the day's news. Andhra Pradesh will have a Rs 2,500-crore dedicated rail corridor to Shamshabad Airport, to provide connectivity to Fab City, hardware parks, apparel park, SEZ (special economic zone) and other infrastructure projects, inform recent reports. And, the dedicated freight corridors of the Railways are faced with the prospect of steep cost escalation, one learns.

A December 13 story on www.bernama.com.my speaks of the Northern Corridor project in Malaysia, which involves Perak, Penang, Kedah and Perlis, and which will see `comprehensive development in various fields, particularly agriculture and food processing'. South Africa has `Ambitious plans to position the Eastern Cape as a new global Super Corridor for sports and tourism,' says www.sarfu.org.za.

And the Capital Corridor, which Amtrak and Caltrans began as a passenger train service connecting the Bay Area and Sacramento with three round-trip trains a day, is celebrating its 15th birthday. "A total of 1.3 million passengers rode the Capitols in the past 12 months compared with 2,73,000 in the first year of operations," informs a December 13 story on http://sfgate.com.

The other corridors

Plus, there are more corridors: Such as, the `101 Corridor' which is to get `new mega data centre' to meet Internet needs (www.marketwire.com); `an education corridor extending along the Spokane River from North Idaho College' (The Spokesman Review); and `The Florida High Tech Corridor Council founded in 1996 to attract and grow high-technology businesses and jobs in the 23 counties across central Florida' (Charlotte Sun-Herald).

"One corridor is pretty much like another," you may fret, as Kyle MacLachlan does. But some corridors can spell trouble. For example, "Tunnels under the Philadelphi corridor along the Egyptian border with Gaza are among the conduits of arms transfer into Gaza," cautions Daily Star - Lebanon. And, "Cass Corridor sex ring suspects arraigned," notes www.bellevilleview.com in a December 14 story.

Time we came to terms with `corridor'. In Concise Oxford English Dictionary, the word appears after corrida (a bullfight), and means `a long passage from which doors lead into rooms.' Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the word as `a passageway (as in a hotel or office building) into which compartments or rooms open.'

The Longest

The longest interior corridor in the world is at St James's University Hospital, Leeds, UK, says Wikipedia, though the hospital's site, www.leedsteachinghospitals.com, doesn't seem to speak about its corridor. `The Long Corridor' is a covered walkway in the Summer Palace in Beijing, China, informs http://en.wikipedia.org. "First erected in the middle of the 18th century, it is famous for its length (728 metre) in conjunction with its rich painted decoration (more than 14,000 paintings)." Rameswaram boasts of "a 4,000 feet long pillared corridor with over 4,000 pillars, supposedly the longest in the world," avers www.indiantemples. com.

There can be problems with long corridors. Such as, what Douglas Adams postulates: "The moment at which two people, approaching from opposite ends of a long passageway, recognise each other, they immediately pretend they haven't. This is to avoid the ghastly embarrassment of having to continue recognising each other the whole length of the corridor." Going along a wrong corridor too may not help. For instance, "If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction," advises Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The connectors

Corridor, in international relations, means "a narrow strip of land belonging to one country and projecting through another," explains Encarta. The corridor may give a landlocked country access to a port, for example.

Serbia and Bulgaria have decided to share a border train station, in Dimitrovgrad, which is on an important international rail route known as Corridor Ten, informs http://travelvideo.tv. "Karabakh does not directly border Armenia, but is connected by a small area of occupied Azerbaijani territory known as the Lachin Corridor," writes Shaun Walker in a December 12 dated article on www.russiaprofile.org.

Corridor can also mean: "A restricted tract of land for the passage of trains. Restricted airspace for the passage of aircraft. The restricted path followed by a spacecraft on a particular mission.

A thickly populated strip of land connecting two or more urban areas," as suggested on www.bartleby.com. Graham Warwick writes on www.flightglobal.com about the US Federal Aviation Administration offering help to the Indian authorities in tackling `the complexity of its airspace... particularly concentrating on the restrictions in the busy corridor between New Delhi and Mumbai.'

The `disambiguation page' on The Free Encyclopedia gives links to: Corridor (graphic novel), `the first Indian graphic novel, written by Sarnath Banerjee'; and wildlife corridor, `a stretch of nature that facilitates the migration animals'. Corridor, on www.dto.com (Discover The Outdoors), is defined as "elements of the landscape that connect similar areas." For instance, "Streamside vegetation may create a corridor of willows and hardwoods between meadows where wildlife feed."

For the cricket-avid, a Wiki page on `line and length' explains that a line just outside off stump is sometimes referred to as `the corridor of uncertainty', because "the batsman may be in two minds whether or not he needs to hit the ball to prevent it hitting his wicket." And for the finance-minded, corridor (or interest rate corridor) means "a combination of two caps, one purchased by a borrower at a set strike and the other sold by the borrower at a higher strike to, in effect, offset part of the premium of the first cap," as www.amex.com educates.

Running down gallery

Corridor is traced to 1591 by Online Etymology Dictionary. "From Italian corridore `a gallery,' literally `a runner,' from correre `to run,' from Latin currere (see current). Originally of fortifications, meaning `long hallway' is first recorded 1814." The word `current' dates back to 1300, from Old French corant `running.' And its links are with Greek khouros, `running'; Lithuanian karsiu `go quickly'; Old Norse horskr `swift'; Old Irish carr `cart, wagon' or karr `chariot'; Welsh carrog `torrent' and so on.

A `running-place,' says www.1911encyclopedia.org, tracing the origin of corridor to Medieval Latin corridorium. As per Webster Dictionary, 1913, corridor is "the covered way lying round the whole compass of the fortifications of a place." The corridors of power are "the highest level of government where the most important decisions are made," states Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms.

Corridors may not be for the common man. "The corridor is hardly ever found in small houses, apart from the verandah, which also serves as a corridor," reads a quote of Stephen Gardiner (1493-1555) on www.brainyquote.com. However, Stone Gossard is hopeful that it would be great to take one city street and turn it into a pedestrian corridor, and see what kind of effect it has on the businesses in that area!

Some `corridor' talk, even as the word does its rounds in the corridors of power.

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

D. Murali

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