When did the country’s prime minister, planning minister and UPA chairperson, who is elected to Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh, drive incognito through most of India’s treacherous highways where cars, trucks and motorbikes dangerously jostle with tractors without rear indicator lamps and rear-view mirrors, tempos, auto-rickshaws, bicycles, bullock carts and animals on potholed roads, all trying to overtake each other? How does the existence of a huge road but ill-maintained network under such chaotic conditions help the nation keep pace with development targets, particularly when 65 per cent of the country’s freight and 85 per cent of population move by road?

Sadly, the current plan (2012 -17) expenditure target of over US$ 100 billion on road building seems to be facing too many roadblocks, including political, organisational, policy constraints, greedy private partners and dishonest contractors. The government does not mean what it says or projects. The focus is more on programmes than their implementation, though the union government runs a ministry for programme implementation. The present status of the1,050-km-long eight-lane Ganga Expressway, launched four years ago, which would have transformed Uttar Pradesh and the lives of over 200 million people in the region, provides a frustrating account of the government’s performance versus plans and promises in the infrastructure sector. The expressway is stuck in an unfortunate political quagmire.

The country’s longest expressway has been a victim of political wrangling within the state and between the state and the centre, land acquisition hurdles and a court order in 2009 stalling construction on ecological grounds. Its failure to take off shows through the nature and extent of the policy and performance paralysis the UPA government has been suffering from. The inter-party political feud involving Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samajwadi Party and Congress is squarely responsible for the jinxed expressway project. It also offers a reality check on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s latest initiative to speed up the implementation of well over 200 high-profile infrastructure and other projects to boost the economic growth rate and development.

Top number crunchers such as Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, always putting up brave face to encounter criticism against the government failure on the economy front, would talk about the oft-repeated US$ 1-trillion plan fund provision to overhaul infrastructure by building and revamping roads, ports, airports and power stations in the 12th Plan period. But, they seem to have no answer when asked about why so many previous plan projects had failed to fructify, where will this $ 1 trillion come from, why have the industry failed to meet the infrastructure bond target in the 2012-13 budget in the past seven and half months; where are the lands for those projects and what about private investors’ sentiment under the current political atmosphere.

Across the country, the pathetic condition of road infrastructure and its management has, in a way, applied the brakes on the growth of the world’s fifth largest economy, which has dropped to its slowest pace in nine years. Industry is harping on the need for concerted policy action by both the central and state governments to improve the state of roads and other infrastructure since the private sector, including foreign companies, is expected to play a stellar role in promoting, funding and managing infrastructure projects. The government does not have the financial muscle to take up and operate these projects, all by itself. The private sector is expected to contribute 44 per cent of the total projected spend of US$ 100 billion on roads and highways over the 12th Five-Year Plan period.

Recently, the Government has approved nine road projects, which are estimated to cost around Rs.11,600 crore and to be executed by state governments on public private partnership (PPP) mode. These projects, which add up to 1,226 km, are said to be at an advance stage of bidding in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The Government is also expected to award 4,000 km of highway projects under the new engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract this year. This will be part of the 9,500-km target set for the national highways by the prime minister himself. Under the EPC model, the Government funds the project completely and the contractor has to just construct the road. This is expected to minimise the time and cost over-runs and a faster rollout of projects. But, little has been done to award the contracts. Roads are not built overnight.

Yet, on paper, the Government of India’s ongoing (spillover from the previous plan period) National Highway Development Programme (NHDP) involving a total investment of US$ 50 billion is claimed to have been making steady progress. Several new concessions or contracts are to be awarded by the end of the current year. Under this programme, a length of about 15,000 km has already been completed and about 10,000 km is under construction. Over the next three years, it is proposed to take up new sections of about 25,000 km, through a combination of PPP (Public Private Partnership) and EPC (Engineering Procurement and Construction).

To supposedly accelerate the pace of NHDP, the Union Government has entered into MOUs with some of the state governments who will undertake PPP projects on behalf of the union government. A number of projects are in different stages of bidding and award. Based on competitive bidding, up to 40 per cent of the project cost is being provided as viability gap funding for National Highways Projects. However, one does not see the type of urgency on the part of the government when it comes to the implementation of such projects. The materials quality, construction quality and surface standards of most of the roads and their maintenance and management fall far short of requirement and public expectation while many of these projects serve as major sources of corruption for profit-hungry contractors, greedy politicians and dishonest bureaucrats. (IPA Service)