India's grand highways going nowhere
fast By Raju Bist
MUMBAI -
Nearly five years after it was proudly flagged off by
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India's national
highway development project, meant to be the most
ambitious initiative undertaken in free India, has
slowed to the point where there is no way a major
portion of it can be completed before general elections
next year.
The project, to pave, upgrade or
rebuild thousands of kilometers of pitted and
overcrowded Indian highways was to be a showpiece for
the achievements of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), at
the helm in New Delhi for two terms. Its delay, from a
myriad reasons, including lack of skilled manpower,
political obstructionism, legal wrangling and red tape,
has thus deprived the BJP of much-needed electoral
mileage.
This is a country dotted with plaques
announcing highways, bridges and factories, mute
testimony to the ambitions of the political class. Often
the plaques carry the names of senior ministers who were
invited to announce them. But in most of the cases,
there has been zero progress beyond the laying of the
foundation stone, either due to lack of funds or because
sanctioned funds have been eaten away by the
multi-headed monster of corruption.
But in the
case of the national highway project, money actually
flowed to the work sites. The premier made sure that the
Indian bureaucracy, notorious for its innovative ways of
re-inventing red tape, didn't come up with its own sets
of roadblocks for the national project, dubbed the
Golden Quadrilateral by Vajpayee's spin doctor, Surendra
Kulkarni. Vajpayee took expenditure approval away from
the notoriously slow Public Investment Board and gave it
to the National Highways Authority of India, an
autonomous body under the Ministry of Road Transport and
Highways.
A seasoned politician and one of
India's most senior parliamentarians, Vajpayee could
immediately see the political gains if the project was
handled right. He ensured that the project would get off
to a grand start by personally handpicking a few key
men. Day-to-day operations were left to B C Khanduri, a
former Indian army officer and that rarity in Indian
politics: a man with a clean image.
Khanduri,
who handled the Minister for Surface Transport
portfolio, immediately tom-tommed the virtues of the
project at every available forum. "The Golden
Quadrilateral will soon connect all the corners of the
country with world-class roads and uninterrupted traffic
flow," he assured all in one of his very first press
conferences.
The project has been divided into
two phases. The first involves the multi-laning and
linking of national highways between New Delhi, Mumbai,
Chennai and Kolkata, India's premier cities located in
the north, west, south and east of the country,
respectively. In all, 77 routes have been identified.
Existing national highways are to be upgraded from
two-lane to four, and at certain places even six,
depending on traffic density.
The second phase,
which entails the networking of 9,000 kilometers of
highways via two "corridors", has a longer deadline of
end-2007. While the first corridor is to link Srinagar,
the capital of troubled northern Jammu and Kashmir
state, to Kanyakumari, a religious center in the south,
the other is supposed to connect Silchar in the east
with Porbandar, Mahatma Gandhi's birthplace, in the
west. The originally stipulated cost of the two phases:
a whopping Rs 540 billion (at 1999 prices, US$11.7
billion at today's exchange rate), spread over 10 years.
The biggest beneficiary among the states is to
be Andhra Pradesh, where the Golden Quadrilateral will
cover 1,014 kilometers, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan are
to follow, with 756 kilometers and 725 kilometers,
respectively. The smallest allocation has been for Delhi
state, the seat of power in India. This may seem
surprising at first, but New Delhi had already been the
beneficiary of a mammoth roadway overhaul in preparation
of the Ninth Asiad Games held there in November 1992.
Haryana (with just 152 kilometers) and Jharkhand (192
kilometers) are two states that will not be adequately
covered under the project.
The first phase was
originally scheduled for completion this December. In
May 2002, then finance minister Yashwant Sinha proudly
announced in parliament that work was on course and
would be completed much before the deadline. However,
only 18 percent of the targeted work had been completed
by this July, with just 1,048 kilometers of the total
5,851 kilometers having been multi-laned.
According to the latest estimates of the
Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 2,680
kilometers, or 45 percent, of the work is expected to be
completed by the end of 2003. The central government has
now extended the deadline to December 2004. But the
ministry is being more pragmatic. It has told the
planning commission, the agency that charts India's
development in five-year plans, that there is no way the
work can be completed before mid-2005. The delay will
probably push up project costs to Rs 670 billion. This
has dampened the mood in the prime minister's office.
The project has all along been perceived as Vajpayee's
baby.
At the outset Khanduri's team took one
very wise decision. They farmed out the work to private
contractors instead of relying on the outdated
technology often employed by government-owned firms.
Indian construction firms were quick in bidding for
various stretches of the project. They were lured by the
many concessions and incentives offered to them by the
central government.
These include income tax
exemptions for 10 years from earnings from the project
and total customs duty exemption on road building
equipment not being produced in the country. Attractive
incentives have also been announced for time-bound
completion of work by the participating companies. To
assure quality, however, they have to give a five-year
guarantee for the executed work.
Ignoring the
political gains as the only motive behind the gigantic
venture, there is another pressing need for a project of
this magnitude: the country's development. According to
one estimate, 40 percent of Indian roads are unsurfaced.
But vehicular traffic has exploded, particularly after
economic reforms were launched in June 1991. This has
resulted in a big strain on the road network.
National highways, which constitute barely 3
percent of the total network, carry about 55 percent of
total traffic since Indian business houses do not rely
on the vast but inefficient, bureaucratic and corrupt
railway network to transport their goods. According to
the planning commission, traffic delays for commercial
vehicles cost Rs 350 billion a year. Poor maintenance of
the national highways causes huge wear and tear, and
consequent obstruction in traffic flow.
The
initiative taken by the government in the road transport
sector to overhaul the system, therefore, generated high
hopes. The scheme, it was expected, would result in
significant economic and social gains. It would give a
big push to the road construction industry, lead to
growth in demand for cement and steel, boost trade and
business, result in savings in vehicle operating costs
and ensure faster, comfortable, smoother and safer road
journeys. Most importantly, it would generate huge
employment opportunities.
According to a
Citigroup Global Markets report released in June, the
benefits related to the project are enormous. Over the
next three years, the average cement steel requirement
will be 4 million tonnes and as much as 11 million
tonnes of cement over its construction lifespan. The
venture will also require 5,500 heavy commercial
vehicles, 1,200 tractors, 190 excavators, 160 graders,
290 rollers and diesel-generating sets a year, boosting
demand in plant and machinery. It is also expected that
as more roads become operational, there will be a shift
from conventional medium-tonnage vehicles to
higher-tonnage ones, leading to significant savings in
transportation.
It is estimated that an average
of 40 persons are engaged per day per kilometer length
of the project, creating 73 million working man-days in
a year. It will also mean a big increase to the rural
economy by way of providing direct and faster access
from the hinterland to the main marketing centers in the
metros and other towns. Major ports along the coastline
would be connected to different parts of the country
after the completion of the project.
There are
many gains associated with the main and corridor
projects. But these are still some way off. Right now,
various factors have come into play to push back the
completion date.
A tax of one rupee per liter on
petrol and diesel, with an equal sum provided by the
World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, has drawn
flak from the opposition. As expected, some opposition
members saw the opportunity to play to their electorate.
"These highways are being constructed so that
foreign-made cars can race along them," said Mulayam
Singh Yadav, leader of the left-leaning Samajwadi Party
in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament. "They
are being built by destroying the huts of the common
people for the sole benefit of the rich. They mean
nothing to the poor."
Adding to the problems,
Indian construction companies have not been able to take
up the challenge of carrying out such an ambitious task.
Says Seema Parmar, a Mumbai-based analyst who tracks
large infrastructure projects for a financial
consultancy, "Indian companies just don't have the
machinery and manpower since they together cannot
execute works involving more than 1,500 kilometers a
year."
Highway authorities even tried hiring
foreign companies, but foreigners have preferred to keep
away because Indian companies receive a price preference
of 7.5 percent when bidding for contracts.
Law
and order problems in some states and lack of
cooperation by others for land acquisition have also
posed a big problem in timely completion. Of the 8,603
hectares to be acquired for ongoing projects under the
program, only 6,412, or 74.5 percent, have been
acquired.
"There are land acquisition problems
in the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh,
Maharashtra and Orissa. In addition, there are law and
order problem in Bihar and adjoining areas," Khanduri
acknowledged at a recent press conference. In many of
these places, the actual construction of the roads has
become mired in red tape, with land acquisition and the
removal of utilities like telephone and electricity
poles and water pipes proving especially cumbersome. The
acquisition of land requires several notifications by
various bodies, right from the local body to the state
government.
The problems are best illustrated by
what is happening in the north Indian state of Bihar,
where the project is lagging the most, according to H K
Chauhan, the project director of the highways authority.
Many of the contractors who have won bids for different
stretches in the states have received extortion threats
and contract demands from local Mafiosi. There was even
a bomb blast in front of the office of one of the
contractors.
The result: workers and engineers
left in droves, refusing to work on the project.
According to the police, trouble started when a
gangster-turned-politician demanded protection money.
The don reportedly was given a Rs 2.4 million contract
to supply sand and boulders. This spurred others to join
the bandwagon.
Later, another stumbling block
cropped up. Stone chips needed for the hi-tech concrete
pavement threatened to derail the premier's dream
project. A large quantity of boulder stone is needed for
the chips. But since the state government has imposed a
ban on stone quarrying, contractors face a serious
problem. Repeated requests for leasing a quarry have
also been turned down. At present, the proposal is
pending with the state government.
The shortage
of an experienced Bihari workforce is another problem.
According to a site engineer, even now not enough
workers are available. The temples along the stretch
marked for the project have also caused serious delays.
Initially, the state government promised that they would
remove the temples. But once the project was under way,
it asked the contractors to remove them, a demand which
the companies turned down. Wisely so, since demolishing
temples is a sensitive issue, especially in a highly
caste-based society like Bihar.
The state is the
playing field of Laloo Prasad Yadav, leader of the
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). He belongs to the lower
castes and, even though his party has been in power for
the past decade, he often blames upper-caste mandarins
of the BJP for the abject backwardness of his state.
Yadav has defiantly refused to cooperate with the
central government, even on earlier occasions. "Why do
we need highways in Bihar?" he asked in a television
program. "The people in my state are so poor that they
don't have cars to drive on roads."
If it is the
RJD that is proving to be a thorn in Bihar, other
political parties are making life miserable for the BJP
in different states. That is because even though the BJP
is in power at the center, it does not rule in the
majority of Indian states. Of the 13 Indian states (out
of a total of 29) through which the project will pass,
the BJP enjoys an absolute majority only in Gujarat. Two
other states, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, are ruled by
the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Biju Janata Dal (BJD),
respectively, both the BJP's political allies. In all
other states, the central government has to cajole local
politicians and bureaucrats to speed up work.
And not everybody has paid heed to the prime
minister's encouraging words. "It is indeed the largest
and most ambitious infrastructure project undertaken in
independent India. Once the project is completed, it
will further integrate our great land," Vajpayee had
said while laying the foundation stone for the project.
"This will place India on the fast lane to
socio-economic development. Indeed, on the highway to
prosperity."
As his model, Vajpayee took the
United States, where the National Interstate and Defense
Highways Act 50 years ago constructed a national road
system that became a prototype for many other countries
around the globe. It was ostensibly set up for the
purpose of allowing defense units to shift around the
country. But what it did was allow for a huge flowering
of national commerce and change the face of the country.
Interstate trucks could go from one end of the country
to the other far faster than rail or shipping. It also
allowed for the fluid movement of people who, if they
couldn't find a job in say, New York, could always hit
the road for California. This resulted in a big boom for
the automobile industry.
In Asia, Malaysia has
been the focus of an intensive road-building program
that opened up the country. Ditto for Thailand, where it
is now possible to get from Bangkok to Korat in the
northeast in about three hours. Earlier, this used to
take many more hours. Raised superhighways in Bangkok
have made life easier for locals, as well as visitors to
the country. China under Zhu Rongji started a huge
road-building program that is having a profound impact
on the economy. The highway stretching out from Shanghai
is often cited as an example of an international
standard infrastructure project.
In all these
countries, the prime mover behind the highway
development projects has not had much trouble swinging
people to his viewpoint. In India, unfortunately,
Vajpayee has had no such luck. He may have tried to
score important political points through his grand
highway project. But ironically, as the antics of the
RJD and other Indian political parties have shown,
politics is proving to be the biggest speed bump in the
way of the premier's dream project.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Sep 18, 2003
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