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.

The Road That Never Was!!

It has been a long hiatus from since I stopped writing on my blog Back to School. Time has been just rapidly gliding by with relocation, ceremonies visits and finally bidding adieu to Kolkata for restarting our household in Mumbai. Ofcourse the fact remains that life now is almost a roller coaster with juggling office, home, wife and daughter! And amongst all this, it is needless to say that writing definitely is on the back burner. But last couple of weeks some issues has been gnawing at the back of the mind. High among them is the infrastructure woes that the common man is subjected to daily.

It’s quite often that one reads in the Mumbai dailies that the Chief Minister or the Commissioner, MMRDA or other persons of concern, speaks about making Mumbai Shanghai, Paris and you name it. Last week the MMRDA Commissioner said that he is for levy of some duties on car users as is done in Paris and London. The honourable CM just came back from a trip to US (to garner investment) and was away during the deluge 2 weeks back. And as usual after returning from the Big Apple, the message is being bandied that “heads will roll”. I was one of the many who had to return home from office on the Saturday 30th June showers. How I miss carrying my camera or having a camera phone on that day. It would have put any decent fellow to shame to see the state of the roads across one of the costliest neighbourhoods of the suburbs. The road has IIT Bombay and Hiranandani skirting its two sides. It also is part of the famed JVLR, a World Bank Development Project. The project has been on for ages now and am sure is much beyond any schedule that the project would have set out with. A flyover near the Powai Lake is in the middle of a construction for the last two years and has been left as it is just before the monsoons. It now resembles a huge cavern and in the time of a deluge, God save the one who gets into the middle of it. A flyover further down is in a far worse condition. The approach road is today totally devoid of any paving and is one huge crater. The drainage holes (all of about an inch in dia) have been provided almost 6 – 8 inches above ground, thereby making a flyover puddle!! I am sure none of you would have ever imagined that water logging can happen on a flyover. Atleast I for one did not imagine. And hence on the fateful Saturday while navigating home, the most precarious situation was on the flyover. The Municipal Commissioner commented in the following week that the drainage system is not geared up for the deluge. It’s good for few tens of centimetres of rain but not for few hundreds of millimetres. I remember seeing news items that stated that the famed JJ Flyover (one of the longest at 2.6 kms) had water logging too!!!

I travel everyday from the L&T Campus at Powai to the Eastern Express Highway. If one leaves office after 6 pm, one can be assured of inching traffic for atleast 4 kms across the length of Powai. Mornings are much better till about 8 am. Thereafter the traffic starts graduating from metres to inches!!

So all this really made me do a little analysis on the web. Everyone talks about charging the traveller as in the developed countries and professes from the “high seat” that the commuter should use the public transport. The first question arises here is will the high and mighty lead us by example. And taxation comes only when the infrastructure is provided. When there is a crumbling infrastructure and the babus have made their part of hay without doing anything worthwhile, what levies does the commuter pay and for what. And since the latest example for levies is Paris, here is some data about the French roads:


Area of the Country (Sq kms, in ‘000) 551.5

Well-maintained roads 952,600 km
Country tracks 600,000 km
Super-highways 11,000 km
National highways 40,000km

Speed Limits (Car & Trailer)
Built-up areas 50 kph
Major roads outside towns 50 kph
Motorways (non toll) 100 kph
Motorways (toll) 110 kph
Motorways minimum left lane 80 kph
Motorways in rain 110 kph

And here is data of roads in India:
Total: 3,383,344 km
Paved: 1,603,705 km
Unpaved: 1,779,639 km (2002)
Area of the Country (Sq kms, in ‘000): 3287.3

Speed Limits: Anybody’s guess!!!!

A look at the world data tells us where we are:
Data Source: World Bank, CIA, Press Reports
The point is not to berate or belittle my country. It is to tell these high and mighty administrators to stop comparing and emulating the west and do something worthwhile as per ideals. We can never play “catch me if you can” as by the time we reach where they are today, they would have gone much ahead. Those who are interested can read an article by Omkar Goswami in the Business World issue of 7th July. It’s available online too (and free).