Will Kamal Nath Succeed on the road in KBK!!!

On the road
Indian Express, June 10, 2009

It is now generally understood that the last United Progressive Alliance government comprehensively dropped the ball on what should be one of India’s central, long-term projects: dragging its highway system into the modern era. The reasons for that unconscionable dereliction of duty cannot, of course, be whittled down to a single few, but reasons have been cited from an underperforming minister to problematic structures in designing private-public partnerships. But the truth is that all such explanations eventually stem from the lack of political will. And the consideration that the close association of big highway projects with the National Democratic Alliance government had something to do with UPA-I’s lack of political will does not do it credit.

Thus there is much catching up to do, and the installation of Kamal Nath, a doer among politicians, might mean that UPA-II is serious. Thus Nath’s ambitious targets for his ministry over the next five years — he intends to complete 35,000 km of roads in the next five years — are welcome not only because they indicate that the government understands the scale of the problem, but also because they are a tacit admission of how much was not done. (In the last five years, barely 7,000 km were finished. Now Nath claims he can do that much each year.)

But a national undertaking of this magnitude — equivalent, for example, to Indonesia’s entire road network — will need sensible design. The process has been frozen up over the past year by making potential bidders jump through too many hoops, leading to a situation where there are simply too few offers. That process has to be fixed; get the bids first, and vet the companies properly to weed out fly-by-night operators once the bids are in. That process can be speeded up, too. Again, a question of political will. There will be other problems: bids might flow in for highways in already well-connected areas, for example, but not, say, for the Bolangir-Gajapati stretch in Orissa. Not all private-public partnerships, thus, should be structured identically. And if the number of possible players is low enough, perhaps a bundling system — one low-intensity highway auctioned as a set with a high-value one — might work. What matters is that the ministry and the minister get moving, and get India moving with them.

NOTE: The writer was right to point out Bolangir - Gajpati stretch, other two important stretches would be Nuapada - Koraput via Dharmagarh and Jaipatna (Kalahandi) and Lanjigarh road - Bhanjanagar (Ganjam) via Simanbadi and Daringbadi (Kandhamal)