Infrastructure , the new game

Infrastructure has been the name of the game for quite some time now in India. The union government has it as one of the topmost priorities. That 's really good. But is it materializing? Well, I am not so sure. The red tape and the politicians have been accused for all the delays, in-activeness and what not.

There are very few projects that are completed on schedule within deadlines in this country. why?

1) We have the long red tape. which because of its length and thickness cannot be called a tape anymore ! lol

2) The contractors, sub contractors, the developer nexus, labor problems

3) Non co-operation from citizens

4) Stay orders from court after court.

5) Gimmicks for vote banks from various political outfits.


and many many more!

Lets take the example of Bandra Worli sea link. It too soooooooooooo long! I read in a paper that the idea was first mooted some 40 years back! If that true! Damn!


There is a reason for me to write this post. This week began with a pretty bad news! a double accident at a Delhi metro construction site. Well, the politics has already started. The communist leader DasGupta says that "Labourers are slaughtered like Pigs". That is too much of a comment I would rather say. At the same time, I would say that the second accident was clearly avoidable. When you know that you have had an issue then why not be a little more serious about it? The company that has contract for construction at that site is supposedly having a history of accidents. They had some issues in Hyderabad metro construction. This Monday night, I heard, there was a small accident at Mumbai metro site managed by the same contractor. We should have better procedure for identifying and blacklisting contractors for their faults.

Also, we saw clearly on T V, that even after the second accident when three fourth of a huge crane was up on air, people were standing right under it and staring up. There was no safety procedure.

I think we need a commission right now , to create a standard operating procedure for all infrastructure projects at national level. It should have authority to decide on everything starting from budget to working environment. It should not be creating a set of rules, but a protocol and skeleton on all aspects of project and finally there should be strict law to ensure that the SOP is adhered to at all circumstances, across the country.

There should be strong penalties for over shooting budget, time frame and flouting of employee safety conditions. There should also protection for projects from political interventions, strikes for vote banks and unnecessary and repeated injunctions and stays from court. I feel that loads of infrastructure projects are delayed by the court injunctions for years.

We should rather have a cooling period b/w declaring a project and actual start of work. That is, between a project finalization and actual start of work, there should be time gap of 30 to 60 days, by when if there are any objections against the project should be raised in a court of law or with the designated commision if any. There authority (court of law or commision), should be bound to give a verdict in at most 90 days and appeal and verdict in high court should be completed within 6 months. So Basically, we can ensure that external and un foreseen forces don't delay the projects.

Infrastructure is very important for nation building, any nation.

Even when 26/11 happened, better infrastructure would have helped to clear more people or may have allowed the forces and govt to respond at a faster pace. We know that the NSG stationed in Delhi had to get a flight from Chandigarh to come to Mumbai. They reached almost 9 hours after the first strike and by then the damage was done.

Better infrastructure might have changed the results for better. Will we learn and speed up? Time will tell.