Indubitably, the year 2023 turned out to be a perfect launching pad for ‘Amrit Kaal’ regarding the massive infrastructure push for the country, when the infrastructure sector witnessed many hits and few misses. While the long list of hits is commendable, the misses too, though relatively lesser, are nonetheless glaring. This piece celebrates the hits of 2023 while it presents the misses of the year gone by, as the canvas for the unfulfilled dreams, aspirations, and agenda for the year 2024.
But before I come to the hits and misses of 2023, here is a peek at how it all began.
The Day It Began
May 1, 1998, was the day of reckoning. On that day, in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri (world-famous for its Alfonso mangoes), at noon time, the then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee dedicated to the nation a 760 km long Konkan Railway project, comprising 92 tunnels (six longer than the then existing railway tunnels in the country) and 300 major bridges, completed in one go in a record seven years to the clockwise precision.
The occasion marked the Great Elephant Awakening. After traversing the steep gradients and taking many detours, the dream originally weaved by freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak had taken a century to fructify.
Vajpayee that day also released the book ‘Konkan Railway: A Dream Come True’ which described the trials and tribulations of the construction of the mammoth project, the biggest and most complex cross-country infrastructure project ever undertaken post-independence. Apart from providing the missing strategic railway link to the nation’s Western Coast, the Konkan Railway was a project delivered by Indians for Indians —engineers, contractors, consultants, suppliers, and Indian money. More importantly, it gave a not-before-experienced confidence – “India can do it.” Indubitably, Konkan Railway marked the celebration of the engineering marvel par excellence; it was also the toast of the nation for its “uniquely unique innovative financial engineering.”
I was amongst the lucky few who witnessed the Great Elephant Awakening moment at Ratnagiri. I also had the life-altering satisfaction of having played a small role in the “financial engineering” of the gigantic mission as the responsibility to raise Rs 3400 crore to construct the Konkan Railway majorly fell accidentally on my tiny shoulders.
Shankh-Naad
Unsurprisingly then, the dedication of Konkan Railway proved just the Shankhnaad of infrastructure revival and transformation saga of India. Shortly, in the same year on October 24, Prime Minister Vajpayee unveiled the most ambitious infrastructure program undertaken by the country — National Highway Development Project (NHDP).
NHDP comprised the 5952 km Golden Quadrilateral, linking four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata (Calcutta) and Chennai to provide high-density corridor linkages and the North-South and East-West corridors covering 7300 km and linking Kashmir-Kanyakumari including Kochi-Salem and Siliguri-Saurashtra. In 1998, the cost of NHDP was estimated at more than Rs 50000 crore. The Golden Quadrilateral was slated for completion by 2003 and the North-South & East-West Corridors Project by 2009.
How ambitious was NHDP is exemplified by the fact that before its commencement, in 51 years since independence, the government had built just 334 miles or 537.5 km of four-lane roads. Unsurprisingly then, Indian roads were more suited for ubiquitous bullock carts than vehicles which had let poet Vajpayee to say poetically- “Hamare desh mein sadkon mein gaddhe hain ya gaddho mein sadke hain? (Does our country have potholes on roads or roads in potholes?).”
When Vajpayee emulated the Mantra of US President John F. Kennedy who once said, “It’s not wealth that built our roads but the roads that built the wealth”, no one believed a day would come when India could dream of having roads equivalent to the USA. But that is in past.
Soon I will return to what happened in 2023. Before that despite me being an apolitical infra watcher, it is worth adding that after arrival of UPA government in 2004, NHDP took a dip during UPA-1 and came to screeching halt in the latter half of UPA-2
Dismantling Gridlock
Also, in October 1998, the success of the Konkan Railway cascaded another revolution to break the jinxed urban mobility gridlock. The regime was of Vajpayee as Prime Minister, program was Delhi Metro Phase I, the incubator was Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and the disruptive leader that brought the metro rail revolution was E. Sreedharan, former CMD of Konkan Railway Corporation now appointed MD, DMRC. Unsurprisingly then, with the ushering in of the metro rail revolution one city at a time, Sreedharan got the monicker ‘Metro-Man’.
Advantage non-India
In the case of both NHDP and Delhi Metro, Indian contractors got shortchanged. Out of the first 146 contracts worth Rs 23,668 crore, 95 contracts (worth Rs 12, 788 crore) went to Indian firms, 38 (worth Rs 7, 130 crore) to joint ventures of foreign and Indian firms and 13 contracts (worth Rs 3,750 crore) to foreign firms. In DMRC, the General Conditions of Contracts (GCC) framed by Japanese consultants-led General Consultants (GC) were so onerous that the entire stretch of underground work and even a portion of elevated civil works contracts went to foreign firms all Indian firms got was smaller contracts or work of subcontractors to foreign contractors. In signalling and metro trains segment, the country had no choice, still, the DMRC ensured Indian partners and make in India manufacturing for the bulk of metro trains.
Indianisation
The Indianisation that started in Konkan Railway was mainstreamed from Delhi Metro Phase II, followed by other cities and other sectors. As the story goes, I was roped in by Sreedharan and entrusted the work to overhaul the GCC made by foreign consultants, under his guidance. The purpose was to bring in more Indian contractors. One change inserted by me with the approval of Sreedharan, changed the game. And the change was foreign contractors could bid for civil engineering works only in JV with Indian contractors where Indian contractors will hold not less than 76 per cent. And what a result! ‘Make in India’ in metro rail construction and other construction projects arrived a decade before the government’s ‘Make in India’ program of 2017.
After this much-needed situational detour, it is time for the infrastructure sector’s biggest hits of 2023.
Infrastructure Sector Hits of 2023
Though there has been variation from month to month, India is at the cusp of infrastructure revolution with the sector believed to have grown between 10 per cent to 12 per cent in 2023. Though the list of infrastructure sector hits is long, I describe below the major five hits.
1. Roads, Highways, Expressways: With per day highway and expressway construction having reached 36 km daily, India is now next only to the US, having surpassed China. Total roads, highways and expressways in India at the end of 2023 exceed 64 lakh km (4 lakh in 1947) with 1,46,145 km national highways, 1,86,528 km state highways, to 6.32 lakh km district roads and 46 lakh km rural roads.
2. Metro Rail: With the completion of more than 100 km of metro rail in 2023 (5 km of North-South Kolkata Metro took 10 years and Phase I of 65 km Delhi Metro 7 years to complete), India with an operational network of more than 900 km became the country with the third largest network of metro rail in the world, surpassing South Korea with 883 km and is on way to becoming the country with second-largest metro rail network dethroning the US, behind only China.
3. Railways: 2023 will be known for two major milestones achieved by Indian Railways. The first is the mainstreaming of Vande Bharat trains, with the operationalisation of 35 pairs of Vande Bharat trains connecting major cities in the east, west, north and south of the country. Second is the operationalisation of the mega rail project, the 1,337-kilometre Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) from Punjab to Bihar, costing more than Rs 51000 crore. It becomes the single largest railway project completed in one go in record time considering that up to 2014 no appreciable progress had taken place.
4. Aviation: India again emerged at the pole position as the fastest-growing aviation market in the world. The year was marked with ever-rising passenger numbers, record aircraft orders and tier two and three cities getting married to air traffic with more than 146 operational airports.
5. Rural infrastructure: Two major silent rural infrastructure revolutions have been brewing in the country. Firstly, the provision of piped water supply in rural households under the ambitious Jal Jeevan Mission, which started in 2019. As per the mission dashboard, out of the total 19,25,36,597 rural households to date, a total of 13,94,37,197 (72.42 per cent) rural households have been provided with piped drinking water and the program is slated to be completed by 2024 end. Another rural sector infra mega push is the likely completion of building 29.5 million affordable houses for rural poor beneficiaries under the PM Awas Yojana (Gramin) by December 2023.
Infrastructure Sector Misses of 2023
There are a few misses too and they are not inconsequential. There are sectoral misses like growing safety worries for the Indian Railways in the train of clutches of avoidable consequential accidents, Indian roads and highways continuing to be the biggest killers in the world, structural problems facing airlines — engine trouble, bankruptcy, pilot strike, continued performance issues of major ports with non-major ports taking centre stage and power distribution sector continuing in mess despite decades of failed reforms. The biggest sectoral miss is further deterioration of quality of air (both ambient and inhouse) Indians rural or urban inhale and rapidly deteriorating water pollution and dwindling of ground water table.
But no miss is worse than the litany of woes of the sufferance of the infrastructure projects from the cost overrun and time overrun. As per the most recent data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), which covers projects worth Rs 150 crore or above, projects on schedule accounted for a mere 34 per cent share of the total. Contrarily, there were as many as 845 delayed projects. The projects were delayed for 36.6 months on average as of November. Out of 845 delayed projects, 38 per cent were delayed for 25-60 months, 24 per cent for 1-12 months, 23 per cent for 13-24 months, and 14 per cent for more than 60 months. And whenever there is a time overrun, even if nothing else goes wrong, the cost overrun comes with it.
The cost overrun saga is intersectoral though Railways is the biggest fall guy. Here goes the cost overrun breakup as of November: Railways incurred the maximum cost overrun of Rs 2.1 trillion, among 22 sectors. Next was the power sector (Rs 0.5 trillion), followed by water resources (Rs 0.5 trillion), road transport and highways (Rs 0.4 trillion).
The central message is that if India, today, wants to make infrastructure for the developed India of 2047, it must first fix what the High-Power Committee headed by noted scientist Dr Anil Kakodkar said in 2012: “It is time to fix the Execution Bug.”
The author is Multidisciplinary Thought Leader with Action Bias and India Based International Impact Consultant. He works as President Advisory Services of Consulting Company BARSYL. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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