An Antithesis

This is an antithesis by Prakash Kumar. Prakash is a good friend and my classmate from my SPJIMR days and an erudite scholar. He is a financial wizard, a very well read man and a deeply informed personality. He has around 9 years of experience in handling international power plant projects in US and Europe. Currently he is with Infosys and exploring the IT industry in the field of Enterprise Solutions. He has been writing frequently on his interest areas like economy, Finance and other issues. He had mailed me this antithesis in response to my latest post on the infrastructure woes:


Amitabha, your blog has erudite contents and exemplifies the need for infrastructure development in India. What's so new about it? The urban lifestyle of living in London and working in Tokyo has engulfed our society at large and migrants like us continue to flock the already burdened metros and tier-1 cities. Let's accept it, cities like Delhi, Mumbai etc can only hold that much. It's a geographical, biological or you call it whatever – but it's a natural constraint limited by space. It is little the civic infrastructure of the city or management of municipality or higher offices of chief ministers can do much about it. It's not about covering up for the laxities they are showing in the existing projects but prima-facie even if these projects like a fly-over here and an underpass there cannot give a lasting solution to the perennial problems faced by commuters in these cities.

The soil structure of metropolis Mumbai is different and is loose in nature. Metro rail project which is a huge success up north will be expensive and time consuming proposition. Yet this is one of the possible via-media to bail the city out and very rightly the project is at its nascent stage in Mumbai. Sitting in a corporate office it is very easy to blast out civic authorities for being shortsighted in approach and lethargic in action but drainage is a bigger problem whose roots lies in explosion of population in these cities. Mother of all problems in India – is and will remain the population and if a lasting solution has to be reached it has to be tracked down to the population menace rather than finger pointing a hapless Chief Minister who happened to be in the States when deluge hit Mumbai. In a Bollywood blockbuster one guy becomes Chief Minister for a day and does wonders are good fairy tale stories while let's accept it ground administration is not as easy as it is meant out to be. It is fair to say that the babudom and netaland is by and large corrupt but because of some tireless working individuals the system still works. And it would be utopia to believe that corruption do not exists in other areas.

As citizen of this country if we as individuals are taking care of our duties to do our part rather than be complainants to way of life there is a chance that situation might improve. Tax evasion is one of the largest in this country (income tax excluded) and size of parallel economy is unknown. Regional politics has taken over in which nationalist ideas like a national highway or inland river integration goes for a toss. These are the meaningful measures which are required and not stop gap arrangements. We as a citizen should not forget that the leaders whom we are bickering about are the one we have elected or have chosen to use the voting day holiday to go for a day out rather than go and vote. The voting percentages in cities like Delhi and Mumbai and in fact in major cities are one of the lowest.

Comparing to developed countries is a waste of time because for the simple reason that the population of city in developed countries remains under check. In cities like New York and LA where it is not in check traffic snarls can be equally worse. Still those cities when there is really an incessant raining are marred with frequent floods and sometimes rain related disaster are much worse than what is made out to be. I have remembered myself being stranded in Levallois office in France without Power for good 6-8 hours post working hours because of one such incident.

Government has long opened infrastructure power and inland roadways to FDI but investment is limited because some of the MNCs who want to do business are really putting such clauses in the contract which makes it untenable. MNCs still stick to there big margins which makes them loser in projects which are being funded by ADB and WB as they call for international competitive bidding. Govt has already altered the infrastructure development policy by removing draconian clause like preference price for local contractors like BHEL but still the L&T's and the Siemens are not coming up with their own contribution towards a better India or if they have, the contribution have been left a lot to be desired. Additionally, rehabilitation issues are not an easy nut to crack as we have seen in case of Singur and Nandigram.

Time has come up to do a micro-management of the ailment by looking at factors like population, uncontrolled urban migration, policies and investments and address them one at a time. Let's build our own India.